1 6 BRITISH DAIRYING. 



value which is now accorded to the milk-yielding capacity of 

 cows, as compared with the beginning of the period. Up to 

 the seventies, milk was regarded as of quite secondary, and 

 now it is of primary, importance. In nearly all of the leading 

 pedigree herds of Shorthorns, for example, milk was deliberately 

 sacrificed to other qualities to beauty of form, early maturity, 

 aptitude to fatten, and so on in order to develop and strengthen 

 these, as it was thought. No doubt the expanding milk trade, 

 which has grown to such enormous dimensions since 1875, and 

 the advent of cheese factories, which occurred in 1870, had a 

 good deal of influence in bringing about the change I have 

 alluded to in favour of the production of milk as the chief aim 

 and purpose of a cow's existence. But earlier still it began to 

 be suspected that we had been breeding our aristocratic Short- 

 horns too much away from milk, and the milk trade and the 

 cheese factories brought out and emphasised a very practical 

 expression of that suspicion. For, after all, it is the dairy 

 farmers upon whom Shorthorn breeders depend to buy a good 

 many of their young bulls. 



It is not egotism on our part to say that no other country 

 can pretend to possess breeds of dairy cattle equal to those 

 which are natives of the British Isles. If there were other 

 breeds elsewhere as good, or nearly as good, as the half-dozen 

 of our own especial dairy breeds that we are properly and 

 reasonably proud of, it is certain that we should have given 

 them a trial long ago, and should have kept them if they were 

 worth keeping. Not that we are dissatisfied with our own, or 

 that we should like to change them for others ; it is simply 

 because if there is anything good in the animal world, in any 

 country, we like to have it for sake of comparison no less than 

 for love of variety. 



Speaking personally, I may say that I have not, in any 

 country near to us in France, or Holland, or Germany, 

 or Switzerland, or Belgium seen dairy cows that took my 

 fancy very much ; and that only in the magnificent valley 

 of Texcoco, wherein stands the very interesting city of 

 Mexico, have I seen a breed of cattle other than British that I 



