THE KERRY 201 



and unreclaimed land lying to the west of Cork, may yet be 

 seen remnants of the modern representative of the "old Irish 

 milch cow" of the Cork and Limerick districts, a breed 

 anterior in time to the Longhorn in the island. It has been 

 described as small, deep-bodied on short legs, with heavy bags 

 of milk, and it was to be found as late as the middle of last 

 century in a form which did not appear to be much changed 

 by the introduction of foreign blood. The remaining cross- 

 bred descendants are thin-fleshed and slow to feed, but yield 

 on inferior fare a considerable quantity of poor milk. Their 

 horns are of medium length, thin and " spaley." The hair, 

 usually brown, has single white hairs more or less mixed with 

 it, and a ridge of white along the line of the back-bone : a 

 characteristic which is common among Irish cattle other than 

 Shorthorns or their high-grade descendants. The Longhorn 

 breed possesses it, and, when Low wrote, it was an acknow- 

 ledged point of the Kerry, though it has disappeared from the 

 best Kerry blood of recent years. 



The Kerry is "the poor man's" or the Irish cottier's cow, 

 especially in cold and inferior districts, and is noted for 

 docility and as a family pet. 



The Kerry bears evidence of great antiquity, although the 

 history is not traceable much further back than the middle of 

 the eighteenth century. It is practically the only surviving 

 pure breed of cattle of some four or five breeds which Ireland 

 possessed not very long ago. One has already been referred 

 to at p. 1 80. Sir William R. Wilde, 1 as a result of osteo- 

 logical researches in connection with the remains of oxen 

 found in Irish bogs, showed that "four breeds or races of 

 cattle existed in Ireland in early times the straight-horned, 

 the curved- or middle-horned, the short-horned, and the 

 hornless ' Maol ' or ' Moyle.' " The latter has been lost among 

 the cross-bred cattle which form the chief Irish herds of the 

 present time. The polled condition which at times appears 

 is as likely to have originated from Scotch polled bulls (of 

 which a good number have been used, especially in the 

 North), as from the Irish prototype. Wilde says, that "so far 

 back as the eighth or tenth century we had in Ireland a breed 



1 " On the Ancient and Modern Races of Oxen in Ireland," read at a 

 meeting of the Royal Irish Academy, and quoted by Pringle. 



