EARLIER WRITERS 3 



of the produce, rent, and expense of cultivating a farm 

 in East Lothian of 533 acres Scotch or 702 English 

 acres." In his 'Treatise on Rural Affairs' (1811), 

 Robert Brown, farmer, East Lothian, a most en- 

 lightened man, refers to the Shorthorned, the Long- 

 horned or Lancashire, the Galloway or Polled, and 

 the Kylo breeds. The Shorthorned breed was found 

 chiefly on the East Coast, and was named in some 

 places the Dutch breed. It had been spoiled by 

 certain men in Lincolnshire, he states, by importations 

 of " bad sort of bulls from Holland," which rendered 

 the cattle subject to " a Iyer or black flesh." In other 

 words, the flesh was naturally dark in colour and 

 without any mottling or marbling, there being no 

 fatty cells in it. Brown has words of commendation 

 for the Fife cattle. Mr Buchan Hepburn of Smeaton, 

 who dealt with East Lothian farming in 1794, re- 

 cords that Sir David Kinloch of Gilmerton was the 

 only man in the county who bred a few heavy cattle 

 of the Dutch or Holderness breed. Robert Kerr, 

 farmer, Ay ton, is interesting in his ' General View of 

 the County of Berwick' (1809). He states that the 

 cattle in the county were " much mixed by crossing," 

 and difficult to describe. " Upon the whole," he 

 notes, "they are shorthorned, and have been much 

 improved by the Teeswater breed, which is the kind 

 chiefly admired in this district." Robert Somerville, 

 surgeon, Haddington, writing on farming affairs in 

 his county (1805), says of the cattle, "The kind most 

 generally prevalent is a cross from the Dutch or 

 Holderness breed." That cross had supplanted a 



