82 PEDIGREE BREEDING 



horn men that white legs might reduce the value of a bull by from 

 5 to 2OO > or more, on account of the prejudice against such 

 markings existing in the minds of the South American buyers. 

 Again, these customers, were most fastidious about the pedi- 

 gree, particularly on the female side, of the animals they took 

 away. Thus there were, all told, many quite superior beasts 

 rejected by the foreigner for lack of colour, breeding, or quality, 

 and left behind for the farmer to buy. Yet he would seldom 

 have one of them even at the price of one half guinea more than, 

 the butcher was willing to pay for an animal to slaughter and 

 to sell wholesale as bull beef. 



That the farmer did not believe in the purely beef animal is 

 shown, again, by the patriotic, but unenlightened, efforts of 

 some landed proprietors to improve the breeding stock of the 

 country on their own home-farms. Perhaps it is more accurate 

 to say that the effort was generally made by the land-agent one 

 of many instances of the landlord's neglect of his own particular 

 business. Proprietors, through their agents, have often been 

 known to secure a very good beef Shorthorn sire for the service 

 of the cows belonging to their tenants ; but these animals were 

 as often almost entirely neglected by the men for whose special 

 benefit they were purchased, frequently at very considerable cost. 

 .The subject might easily be made tedious if all the evidence 

 of the unsuitability of the beef Shorthorn for general farming 

 conditions were collected, but one last point may be mentioned, 

 namely that the belief became almost universal that the Short- 

 horn was a non-milking breed. I have heard this maintained 

 by agricultural authorities of all grades in this country ; I have 

 known it taught at first-class agricultural education institutes 

 on the continent. 



For their successful efforts in dispelling false ideas about 

 the non-milk yielding qualities of all Shorthorns, the agri- 

 culturists of England owe the Dairy Shorthorn Association 

 a very deep debt of gratitude. The difficulties they had to face 

 are clearly shown by a study of the list given here of the number 

 of entries in the classes for Shorthorns of both descriptions of 

 stock at the shows of the Royal Agricultural Society of England 

 for the years 1906 to 1910. 



