74 EVOLUTION OF BRITISH CATTLE 



advantage of the example and advance of the 

 Low Countries. The change could not come all 

 at once, however, but it was begun about 1644 

 through the introduction of turnips and red clover 

 to Kent by Sir Richard Weston, who had been 

 educated in the Low Countries, and who, in later 

 life, passed some years of exile there ; 1 and it was 

 accelerated by the work of Jethro Tull and Lord 

 Townshend early in the following century. And 

 just as better crops and better farming were 

 introduced by Sir Richard Weston and others, so 

 also were better stock imported by proprietors and 

 farmers who wished to improve their own and the 

 cattle of the country. 



It will be noticed that, so far, the original 

 British cattle and all the intruding races were 

 whole coloured : the Celtic cattle were black, the 

 Roman white, the Anglo-Saxon red, and the 

 Scandinavian light dun. The cattle now to be 

 imported were chiefly of broken colours. The 

 date of their first arrival cannot now be fixed, but 

 the will of John Percy, of Haram, near Helmsley, 

 in Yorkshire, suggests that it may have been as 

 early as 1400 : " To my son John I bequeath two 

 stots with short horns ; to John Webster a small 

 horned stot ; to John Belby a cow with a white 

 leske ; to my son a heifer with a white head." 2 



1 " Dictionary of National Biography." 



2 Bates's " Thomas Bates and the Kirklevington Shorthorns," 

 1897, p. 23. 



