COWS. 29 



coat, in Devonshire, is considered to show a tendency 

 to diarrhcea. 



The old Welsh taught that the red cow's milk 

 would heal a wound, as in Sussex they said that the 

 black cow's milk yields more butter than that of 

 any other kind. This, you will ask, from the 

 proprietary of those lanky reds that Smithfield has 

 stared at of late ? In Buffon's day the black cow 

 was deemed to yield the best milk ; the white 

 cow greatest measure. He mentions also the exis- 

 tence of a breed of cows in Barbary, of a dark 

 chesnut colour, small, fleet, gregarious, to the extent 

 of three to four hundred in a herd. This cannot 

 surely be the tawny tinge of the modern Guernsey, 

 or the Hubback "yellow red?" But to rise to a 

 grander view, in the tenth century colour made a 

 vast difference in the value of a ransom paid in 

 kine. An early record speaks of a hundred white 

 cattle with red ears as counting equal in compensa- 

 tion for an offence against a Prince of North or 

 South Wales, with a hundred and fifty dark or black 

 cows. In this relative estimation, too, as respected 

 tint, the native sorts stood in the regular presents 

 sent by the Cambrian princes doing homage to the 

 King of England. White, too, with red ears, was 

 the herd of four hundred from the wilds of Breck- 

 nockshire, wherewith Maud de Breos was con- 

 strained, on behalf of her offending lord, to purchase 

 peace, through the intervention of his queen, from 

 the tyrannical John. 



Hence it was that Youatt conjectures the white 

 breed with red ears (of which we have the remnant 



