6o EVOLUTION OF BRITISH CATTLE 



about Barnstaple on the north coast : the district in 

 which the modern North Devon breed originated. 

 The polled Devons were described to Lawrence 

 as " coloured, middle-sized, thick-set, and apt to 

 make fat, but coarser than the true-bred Devon." ^ 

 Their colour is not recorded, but, in the " Annals 

 of Agriculture" for 1792, a writer called Treby 

 mentions both yellow and hornless cattle in 

 South Devon.'* 



TAe Somerset Polls. — These are also extinct. 

 Low wrote of them : " The Sheeted Breed of 

 Somerset . . . has existed in the same parts of 

 of England from time immemorial. The red 

 colour of the hair has a slight yellow tinge, and 

 the white colour passes like a sheet over the 

 body. The individuals are sometimes horned, 

 but more frequently they are hornless." ^ There 

 is a portrait of two sheeted Somerset cows, a 

 horned and a hornless, in the Low collection of 

 paintings in Edinburgh University. 



The Irish Maoiles. — Hornless cattle of the old 

 Irish race are found here and there chiefly in 

 the west and in the north : from the level of 

 Roscommon to Donegal and Antrim. Their 

 numbers are now small, and there being no 



^ " General Treatise on Cattle," etc., 1805, p. 71. 



2 The presence of these hornless cattle at Barnstaple raises 

 several unusually interesting questions, viz. Did they impart their 

 shortness of leg to the North Devon breed, and did the short legs 

 of the Dexter which came from Devon cattle come originally from 

 Scandinavians ? 



^ " Domesticated Animals," p. 350. 



