72 PEDIGREE BREEDING 



Though Robert Bakewell was the pioneer in breeding opera- 

 tions among cattle, his great influence lives through his disciples 

 rather than through his cattle, or even his sheep. We know that 

 he worked with a breed known as the " Longhorn" and that in 

 spite of the improvement effected in that variety by his skill, 

 enterprise and pertinacity, it never became very widely dis- 

 tributed. The brothers Collings certainly under the indirect 

 influence of, and probably directly inspired by, Bakewell, fixed 

 upon other stock than his for improvement. It was the descend- 

 ants of these animals, now called by us the " Shorthorn," that 

 spread everywhere. There is good evidence to show that the 

 animals with which the Collings brothers worked had them- 

 selves been much improved by others before them. It appears 

 from existing records that there had always been good native 

 cattle belonging to the agriculturists who lived in the North- 

 Eastern counties of England, the home of the Collings family. 

 These native cattle had no doubt been crossed with good bulls 

 imported from neighbouring continental countries. It is pos- 

 sible that the breeding material upon which the Collings began 

 to work was itself better than that with which Bakewell started. 

 Moreover, the brothers had as collaborators a very fine body 

 of agriculturists working during their lifetime on the creation 

 of the same breed ; and it would appear that their success, over 

 other breeders, was as much due to their powers of self- 

 advertisement as to their skill as breeders and rearers. Great 

 as this skill was, their powers of advertisement brought their 

 names into much greater prominence than those of any of their 

 contemporaries. The history 1 of their work is full of interest, 

 but here there is space only for an analysis of results, which, it 

 is hoped, may be of use in the immediate future. 



Whatever were the qualities of the cattle with which Robert 

 and George Collings began their breeding operations, they were 

 at the end of their careers turning out beasts eminently suitable 

 for stocking the farms of the greater part of England, Scotland 



1 History of Shorthorn Cattle, by James Sinclair, Vinton and Co., 1907. 

 In this work the author has collected from various sources a valuable 

 amount of information concerning the doings of the early improvers as well 

 as much other useful information which brings the story of the breed up 

 to date of publication. 



