VI 



THE DUTCH INVASION 



ALTHOUGH it was not till the seventeenth and 

 eighteenth centuries that what we might call the 

 " Dutch Invasion " took place, the tracks of the 

 cattle brought in from the Low Countries at that 

 time are only a little clearer than those of the 

 Scandinavian cattle that came across the North 

 Sea seven or eight hundred years before. One 

 reason for this is that there was no great human 

 migration to correspond ; while another is that, 

 misled by the great change the Dutch cattle 

 induced upon the cattle of Britain, we look for 

 the importations of enormous numbers : forgetting 

 that such are not required if the imported animals 

 and their progeny were thought much more 

 worthy than those whose territory they invaded. 

 The recent increase of Shorthorns and Herefords 

 outside Britain might be quoted as cases in 

 point. 



In Britain there were incentives to the impor- 

 tation of foreign stock that had never existed 

 before. During the sixteenth century, through 

 political and other interests, England was drawn 



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