VIII 



THE MELTING-POT 



Having now identified the races of cattle that at 

 one time or another have arrived in Britain and 

 partaken^ in the production of the breeds we 

 now possess, we have next to inquire how each 

 race modified or was modified by the races that 

 arrived before or behind it. It has already been 

 stated, that the great agricultural awakening com- 

 menced in the seventeenth century. From that 

 time forward the desire for improvement grew 

 keener and keener, and although, even at the 

 present day, that desire is happily still strong, it 

 might be said quite fairly, considering all the 

 circumstances, that it reached its height about the 

 junction of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. 

 One of its many forms was to improve the live- 

 stock of the country. Men travelled long dis- 

 tances in order to procure cattle which they 

 thought better than those of their own district, 

 and as the cattle imported from the Low 



* A few black-and-white cattle and some other cattle — the 

 Channel Islanders, for instance — have come in, but they have 

 taken no part in producing our present breeds. 



88 



