34 A HISTORY OF HEREFORD CATTLE 



ing of Herefordshire: "The soyle is so fertile for 

 corne and cattle that no place in England yieldeth 

 more or better conditioned. " This quaintly ex- 

 pressed testimony as to the herds of Herefordshire 

 being "well conditioned" is significant because it 

 indicates that the present-day penchant of the breed 

 to maintain flesh well on pasture was characteristic 

 of the cattle of the valleys of the Severn and the 

 Wye long before the type as we now know it was 

 established. 



Whence the White Face? It is impossible to state 

 definitely when or how the white face as a distinct 

 characteristic first made its appearance. The orig- 

 inal local "breed" was probably red, resembling in 

 this respect contemporaneous types existing in the 

 neighboring county of Devon and also in Sussex 

 which districts, by the way, retain to this day their 

 solid reds, carrying wide-spread horns. That these 

 and the aboriginal Herefords were co-related seems 

 fairly certain, but at an early period the Hereford- 

 shire cattle apparently assumed a larger size. There 

 were stiff soils to be worked and oxen supplied the 

 motive power for the plow as well as for the harvest 

 handling. Cattle were valuable primarily as draft 

 animals. Size and strength were, therefore, essen- 

 tial elements of value, the beef of that age being 

 derived mainly from the sale of superannuated oxen 

 and cows approaching the end of their period of 

 usefulness. In fact it was deemed extravagant to 

 slaughter an ox in his prime say at six years old 

 when he could just as well be kept in the yoke until 



