10 



INTKODUCTION 



Eyton, like Professor Low and others, did 

 not know that he was treating the work of two 

 men as that of one; referred this information 

 to B. Tomkins, Jr., but it must have concerned 

 his father, whose stock had become famous 

 many years before the son began business in 

 1769. The father evidently at an early period 

 of his career bred this bull from descendants 

 of the Silver cow his father left him in his will 

 in 1720. 



Sinclair has shown that the red, with the 

 white face, color markings for cattle were 

 fashionable in the country before the 

 death of Lord Scuddmore in 1.671, and 

 Eichard Tomkins esteemed them fifty years 

 after in 1720, since his favorite Silvers 

 were thus marked, so that the taste for 

 these colors dates back much further than has 

 been generally supposed. Their system of 

 breeding was essentially the same as that fol- 

 lowed by Hereford breeders at the present time, 

 only over a more prescribed area. In one re- 

 spect it was the opposite, since they always 

 bred the bulls used instead of purchasing them. 

 In their case this was necessary, as there was 

 no reliable source to procure them from out- 

 side their own herds, in fact no cattle so good 

 as their own to improve them with were out- 

 side their own herds. 



Professor Darwin says: "The power of man 

 to accumulate the slight variations of our do- 

 mesticated animals in a given direction by con- 

 stant selection is very considerable. The im- 

 provement begins by crossing different types, 

 and is afterward continued by constant selec- 

 tions from the varieties produced. When a cross 

 is made the closest selection is more necessary 

 than in ordinary cases between good animals of 

 an established type or breed. To accumulate 

 these slight differences, absolutely inapprecia- 

 ble to the ordinary observer, acquires an ac- 

 curacy of eye, touch and judgment that not 

 one in a thousand possesses. A man endowed 

 with these qualifications, who devotes a life- 

 time to the work, will effect great improve- 

 ments." 



This work the two B. Tomkins were pre- 

 eminently fitted for, as they carried it out with 

 consummate skill and success, which the sale 

 in 1819 demonstrated. They seemed to have 

 intuitively grasped the physiological law enun- 

 ciated by Darwin a hundred years after, "that 

 given an equal amount of pureness of blood, the 

 male animal possesses a greater amount of ac- 

 cumulated variation in a given direction than 

 the female.'* 



"These variations are at first artificial, but 

 after accumulating them for a length of time 



they become typified, and constitute a distinct 

 variety or breed." 



It is remarkable that the elder B. Tomkins 

 first observed the variation in the direction he 

 desired in two females, and he and his son 

 afterwards conserved it more particularly in the 

 males. 



Regret was at one time expressed that Tom- 

 kins did not exclusively adopt the red with 

 white face colorings for their cattle, but con- 

 sidering that the cattle B. Tomkins, Sr., began 

 with were a grey, a dark red with white spots 

 on its face, and a red with white face: one 

 starting with these animals differently marked, 

 he and his son would have to subordinate color 

 marks to the more essential qualities when 

 developing a fresh type of animal from various 

 sources. When selecting and blending the best 

 materials from a limited number of animals, 

 it would have been impossible, even if desired 

 at that time, to make the places of the color 

 spots on the body an all-important considera- 

 tion. If they had bred exclusively from red 

 with white face, mottle face or grey, they must 

 have sacrificed some of their best animals and 

 thus defeated their object. They knew the 

 business too well to do that, and by continually 

 crossing their differently marked cattle to de- 

 velop and fix certain desired characteristics they 

 kept these color marks on the body, liquid or 

 movable, consequently when the old red with 

 white face Herefords were crossed with the 

 Tomkins cattle the color marks were easily 

 made to conform to the originals, while the 

 progeny retained the typically fixed, good qual- 

 ities of the Tomkins breed, conserved through 

 a long line of generations. 



It is unfortunate that at the time when the 

 Tomkins were systematically transforming the 

 Herefords from rough, bony draught and dairy 

 cattle into a superior beef -producing breed, that 

 no written records were kept. In the absence 

 of these the old writers took color markings as 

 indicating what they chose to call breed. They 

 spoke of the white-face breed, the mottle breed, 

 the grey breed; and they took it for granted 

 that breed and color necessarily went together 

 and could not be separated. The universal ac- 

 ceptance of this great error led to endless, re- 

 grettable disputes amongst the old breeders. 

 This misuse of the word "breed" was most 

 misleading during the transition state of the 

 Herefords, and all attempts to trace its history 

 by color marks completely failed. Marshall, 

 describing Bakewell's Longhorn in 1784, says: 

 "Color is various, the Brindle, the Pinchbeck 

 and the Pye are common. The lighter the 

 color the better they seem to be esteemed, but 



