The Regional Problem 83 



horns, though it would pay them to subscribe 

 their market price and have them put to death, 

 given a guarantee that nothing like them should 

 ever appear in the place again. Every one of them 

 is an embodied fraud. The premium sires apart, 

 everybody I know in Mayo buying a bull goes to 

 Roscommon for him,and probably the Roscommon 

 is the last type in Ireland that ought to be brought 

 into Mayo. Besides, only the weeds go west from 

 Roscommon. 



Following the " little red bull," and just like 

 him, came his half sister, but well horned, and now 

 she is in the dairy herd book (Polly II., No. 

 739), with her tests about forty per cent, above 

 the requirement in butter fat, and her milking 

 record, produced in the main without hand feeding 

 on pasture of which the purchase annuity is 33. /d. 

 an acre. Is not this a cow worth multiplying ? 

 The gentleman of the Department who superin- 

 tended the milking tests will remember the facts 

 and conditions. The heather was still abundant, 

 and by way of permanent proof, a plot of it has 

 been carefully preserved, now the most precious 

 plot on the whole farm, because my facts would 

 look quite impossible without it. The official 

 explanation of it, given in another chapter, 

 is that I planted the heather on good soil for an 

 economic illusion to impose on the Estates 

 Commissioners and bring down the purchase 

 annuity. 



Polly II. is a red cow, near the ground, with 

 the good points of her predecessors on both sides ; 



