CATTLE AND SHEEP. 3 



prisoners ; or, if his size and substance were favourable, he 

 was degraded into an ox, and took his place in the team. 

 Of his progeny, the males, with the exception of a successor 

 or two in his own vocation and a few oxen for the plough, 

 were made into very immature veal. The females were 

 reared. Such as were seasonably prolific, and as showed 

 milking qualities, succeeded their mothers in the dairy ; 

 and the remainder, after having been indulged with the 

 best pasture which the district afforded, served to relieve, 

 with the tenderness of youth, the uniformity of old cow 

 beef which formed the staple supply of the provinces. 



Of the pure races we must speak more definitely. 

 England preserved the Devons and the Herefords. We 

 add, with some hesitation, the appropriately-named Long- 

 horns, which still struggle for a separate existence in a 

 small district round the point where the counties of 

 Warwick, Derby, Stafford, and Leicester approach each 

 other. To fix on a known point, we should say they hail 

 from Atherstone. Some splendid horns from this race are 

 preserved by Lord Bagot at Blithfield. As late as the year 

 in which the General Agricultural Meeting was held at 

 Derby, a bull of this sort obtained a prize. The earliest, 

 and that very recent, representative of the Short-horn, of 

 which we have knowledge, was a large, uncouth, patch- 

 coloured animal from the district of Holderness a milk- 

 seller's cow. Wales furnished a mean, black, mountain 

 bullock, dignified with the name of a Runt, which still ap- 

 pears in considerable numbers in the markets of the western 

 and southern grazing districts. Perhaps the improvement 

 which has of late years been made in this race by the in- 

 fusion of West Highland blood can hardly be called a cross. 

 We apprehend that both races speak Gaelic. Scotland 

 gave us the unquestionable West Highlander, whose head- 

 quarters are now fixed in Argyleshire and West Perth, 

 and the somewhat more equivocal Galloway ; perhaps even 

 the rough east country stot, from Aberdeenshire and its 

 associate counties, may claim some locus standi in this enu- 



B 3 



