EARLY ENGLISH IMPROVERS 65 



(464) had ticked faces, and this peculiarity crops 

 out at rare intervals to this day. 



While the exact sources of the original herds are 

 unknown, Mr. Hewer Sr. is on record as having at 

 a very early period in his career obtained five cows 

 and heifers of Tully of Huntington and he had in his 

 herd stock descended from "Tomkins' prime cat- 

 tle." As in the Tomkins herd the credit for the 

 first great success in the Hewer herd is laid to a 

 bull called Silver (540), calved in 1797, and de- 

 scribed as "red with a white face." Like Tomkins, 

 Hewer had recourse to in-breeding. He used sons 

 and grandsons of Silver (540), and one of the for- 

 mer, Old Wellington (507), also red with white face, 

 was particularly prized. Through Young Welling- 

 ton (505), same color, Old Favorite (442), Waxy 

 (403) and others, the blood was strongly concen- 

 trated. John Hewer carried out the same idea in 

 his management, and this persistent reunion of 

 bloods flowing from a common source was largely 

 instrumental in establishing the fame of the strain 

 for prepotency. One of the greatest of the Hewer 

 bulls, Old Sovereign (404), was said to have been 

 the progeny of an own brother and sister, a son and 

 daughter of Wellington. It is claimed that he was 

 acknowledged to be "the best bull ever bred in the 

 county of Hereford and the sire and grandsire of 

 more prize cattle at Smithfield and elsewhere than 

 any other bull in the kingdom." One of his sons was 

 the celebrated mammoth Cotmore, first prize Here- 

 ford bull at the first Eoyal of England Show, which 



