364 



HISTORY OF HEREFORD CATTLE 



were accustomed to bring some hundreds, and 

 generally sold them to the graziers of the mid- 

 lands or to other dealers who brought them up 

 to the great markets at Banbury, Aylesbury, 

 and Northampton, where there was always a 

 ready sale. The trade now seems quite changed, 

 and but few good animals ever reach the mid- 

 land markets, as the graziers themselves go 

 down by rail in a few hours and buy largely of 

 the breeders or dealers, who get together on 

 their own premises lots of from 30 to 100 for 

 their selection, and it is only rarely that men 

 can be suited at the old markets. 



HISTORY OF THE HEREFOED BREED. 



"I am greatly indebted to the writings of the 

 late Mr. Dixon, a well-known agricultural 

 writer, for much of the information contained 



DOWNTON ROSE (V. 10, p. 172) 4486. 

 Bred by T. Fenn, Downton Castle, Eng. 



in this paper, as well as to my good friend Mr. 

 Duckham, member of Parliament for Hereford- 

 shire, who was the editor of the Hereford Herd 

 Book, and who has done as much, or perhaps 

 more than any other man, to bring this noble 

 race of cattle prominently before the public at 

 the present time, who has given me so much 

 valuable information, and I cannot do wrong in 

 quoting from these most reliable authorities for 

 many statements which I shall make in this 

 paper. I will also give you my own personal 

 experience as a grazier, and judge at the Royal 

 and other agricultural shows, where I had 

 many opportunities of getting well acquainted 

 with this breed. 



"Old Fuller, who was a quaint writer of more 

 than two hundred years ago, says of Hereford- 

 shire, 'that it doth share as deep as any county 

 in the alphabet of our English commodities, 

 though exceeding in 'W' for wood, wheat, 

 wool, and water/ and, that 'its wheat was 

 worthv to jostle in pureness with that of Heston, 

 in Middlesex, which furnished manchets for the 

 kings of England, and its Wye salmon were in 

 season all the year long.' And before his day 

 'painful Master Camden' described the county 

 as 'not willingly content to be accounted second- 



shire for matters of fruitfulness.' Yet both 

 writers are silent as to cattle, and Dray ton sang 

 of 'Fair Suffolk's maids and milk/ of the hogs 

 of Hampshire, and the calves of Essex, and how 



Rich Buckingham doth bear 



The name of 'bread and beef;' i 



yet he says nothing of these attributes of Here- 

 fordshire. 



"Many writers were of opinion that the Here- 

 fords were descended from cattle from Devon 

 and Normandy, which were of a deep reddish 

 brown color, and that the white faces were an 

 accident from a singular sport of the breeding 

 of a white-faced bull by a noted breeder of the 

 last century, Mr. Tully, of Huntington, near 

 Hereford. The story I have heard related as 

 follows : That the cow-man came to him, on his 

 coming out of church one Sunday, and told him 

 that his favorite cow, who was daily expecting 

 to calve, had produced a bull calf with a white 

 face, and this had never been known before. 

 Report says the master ordered it at once to be 

 killed, as he dared not let it be known that he 

 had such a stain of blood in his well-known 

 herd ; but the man begged him to go and see it, 

 as it was the finest calf he had ever seen. Mr. 

 Tully when he had seen it, agreed with his man 

 that it was a wonder, and that he would, out of 

 curiosity, rear it. He did so, and he proved to 

 be a very remarkably fine animal, and he used 

 him on all his best cows, and his progeny be- 

 came celebrated for their white faces. 



"Many old chroniclers say that the county was 

 noted for its breed of white cattle on the banks 

 of the Wye as far back as the tenth century, but 

 they had red ears, and it is recorded that Lord 

 Scudamore in, or about the year 1660, intro- 

 duced some red cows, with white faces, from 

 Flanders, and this may have been the reason 

 that the noted Tully bull, after a lapse of more 

 than a hundred years, might have cropped up, 

 as a sport, from the well-known deep red cattle 

 of the country. 



"It must not be considered that the white 

 face is the only type of the purity of this breed, 

 as the mottled face is considered by many breed- 

 ers as of greater value than the pure white, and 

 I can myself testify that some of the finest cat- 

 tle I ever grazed, and some of the best I ever 

 saw, have been mottled faced, in fact those of 

 the last named type have shown the greatest 

 aptitude to fatten, on the grass, of any, and 

 manv graziers have told me the same. 



"Mr. Eyton, of Eyton Hall. Salop, was the 

 founder of the Hereford Herd Book in 1845, 

 and when he commenced it, he found it neces- 

 sary to divide the Herefords into four distinct 



