EXISTING BREEDS OF CATTLE 179 



With these different breeds, both short and long wools, there was 

 abundant scope for experiment and improvement. Some effort 

 had been made at the close of the seventeenth century, as has 

 been already noticed, to improve the lustrous fleeces of Lincohis, 

 and to remedy the bareness of their legs and bellies. But, from 

 the grazier's point of view, no breeder had yet attempted to obtain 

 a more profitable shape. If any care was shown in the selection 

 of rams and ewes, the choice was guided by fanciful points which 

 possessed no practical value. Thus Wiltshire breeders demanded 

 a horn which fell back so as to form a semicircle, beyond which 

 the ear projected ; Norfolk flockmasters valued the length and 

 spiral form of the horn and the blackness of the face and legs ; 

 Dorsetshire shepherds staked everything on the horn projecting 

 in front of the ear ; champions of the South Downs condemned all 

 alike, and made their grand objects a speckled face and leg and no 

 horn at all. 



In cattle, again, no true standard of shape was recognised. Size 

 was the only criterion of merit. " Nothing would please," wrote 

 George Culley in 1786, " but Elephants or Giants." x The qualities 

 for which animals were valued were not propensity to fatten or 

 early maturity, but their milking capacity or their power of draught. 

 The pail and the plough set the standard ; the butcher was ignored. 

 Each breeding county, however, had its native varieties, classified 

 into Middle-horns, prevailing in the South and West of England, 

 in Wales and in Scotland ; Long-horns, in the North-west of 

 England and the Midlands ; and Short-horns, in the North-east, 

 Yorkshire, and Durham. 



The Middle-horns in the South and West of England were red 

 cattle of a uniform type ; the North Devons, nimble and free of 

 movement, were unrivalled in the yoke ; the Herefords, not yet 

 bred with white faces, were heavier animals which fattened to a 

 greater weight ; the Sussex breed came midway in size between 

 the two. None of the three were remarkable for the quantity of 

 their milk. Other middle-horned breeds were the black Pembrokes, 

 like their Cornish relatives, excellent for the small farmer, and 

 the Red Glamorgans, which in the eighteenth century were highly 

 esteemed as an all-round breed. Every year thousands of the 

 black Angleseys were swum across the Menai Straits to the main- 



1 Quoted by Arthur Young in his Lecture on the Husbandry of Three Famous 

 Farmers (1811), pp. 10-11, 



