42 EVOLUTION OF BRITISH CATTLE 



the right Breed of Kine through our Nation, it 

 generally affordeth very good ones, yet some 

 Countries so far exceed other countries, as 

 Cheshire, Lancashire, Yorkshire and Derbyshire 

 for black Kine," ^ and *' Those that were bred in 

 York-shire, Darby-shire, Lancashire, and Stafford- 

 shire were generally all black." ^ 



That the red race possessed the rest of the 

 country till the eighteenth, or at any rate till the 

 seventeenth, century is practically certain, but 

 the proof is less direct than clear. The question 

 is complicated by several factors : by the importa- 

 tion of red and white flecked cattle to Lincoln 

 and some other eastern counties in the sixteenth 

 and seventeenth centuries, by the advent of the new 

 breed — the Longhorns — in the eighteenth century, 

 by the breaking down of the old English system 

 of agriculture which did not encourage the move- 

 ment of cattle, by the growth of London, and by 

 *' the graziers having mixed the cattle more or 

 less in each county."^ We can look backwards, 

 however, and keep these points in mind in doing so. 

 At the present day we see the south of England 

 encircled by a broken band of red-coloured cattle 

 — the Lincolns, the Norfolks and Suffolks, the 

 Sussex, the South and North Devons, and the 

 Herefords. According to Youatt and Marshall 



1 " The English House-Wife," 1683. 



'^ " Cheap and Good Husbandry," 1683, p. 69. 



3 "Compleat Body of Husbandry," 1757, vol. iii. p. 36. 



