CATTLE AND SHEEP 11 



But after some years, when he seemed to have attained, or 

 to be on the point of, perfection, he came to a dead lock ; 

 his females, though much solicited, refused to give him 

 produce. On this ground, and on this only, we believe, he 

 broke up his herd and discontinued the pursuit. Lord 

 Spencer, an enthusiastic advocate of short-horns, admitted 

 in more than one public speech that, in his herd, fecundity 

 had diminished to an inconvenient degree, and was only 

 maintained by a degree of care and attention which could 

 hardly be extended to the general breeding stock of a king* 

 dom. We know the ready answer The females are too 

 fat. But that is not the whole question. We lately in- 

 spected a herd of Herefords, the property of a distin- 

 guished and (we speak on the authority of his farming ac- 

 counts) very successful agriculturist. The breeding cows 

 and heifers, living solely on crushed gorse, were consider- 

 ably above the point of marketable beef in fatness. We 

 have no doubt they would be very bad milkers. The bulls 

 were loaded with fat ; but there was no deficiency of calves ; 

 the drafts on account of barrenness were very few. The 

 expression of the owner was, " I have no trouble on that 

 score." Twins were by no means unknown in the herd. 

 Since short-horns have been very generally introduced 

 into the midland counties, barrenness has been a great 

 " trouble" to the cheese-making farmer. 



We will endeavour to sum up impartially. Even the 

 improved short-horn is by nature a coarse animal, requir- 

 ing a good climate and a generous soil, and unprofitable 

 for merely feeding purposes. Sterility is a serious tax on 

 any herd which, by great care and attention, has attained 

 to a respectable quality of flesh, and to symmetry of form. 

 The dairy sustains the short-horns. The cast cows soon 

 acquire a rough coating of fat, and form a valuable supply 

 of low-priced beef for the manufacturing and colliery dis- 

 tricts for those appetites which we have described as 

 being active without being critical. But we should be un- 

 just if we did not assign to the short-horns one quality of 



