teristics which they sought. Their names were brought to pub- 

 lic notice by exhibiting striking specimens from their herds 

 throughout England and by this means and by the introduction 

 of hiring out bulls the Shorthorn ceased to be a local bred and 

 became widely known and distributed throughout the United 

 Kingdom. Charles Colling sold his herd in 1810, one of his 

 bulls, Comet, brought the then extraordinary price of $5,000.00. 



Following the Colling Brothers many good herds were es- 

 tablished in North England mainly from stock of the Colling 

 blood, among the most noted were owned by Thomas Bates and 

 John and Thomas Booth. From these two herds, bulls were bred 

 to head practically all of the other herds of the period and the 

 influence of their breeding operations exist today. 



The Booths, while not overlooking milk, bred largely for 

 great flesh carrying capacity and pursued a system of exhibiting 

 well fleshed cattle from their herds at the leading fairs of the 

 time. 



Thomas Bates aimed at and succeeded in breeding what may 

 be termed as a refined type of cattle, and we are told that the 

 females in his herd had a "refined sweetness of character pecu- 

 liarly their own," they were as a rule deep milkers. Bates con- 

 tended strongly for purity of blood and secured for his herd only 

 cattle of the oldest and best known lines of breeding, he was 

 morever an all-around improver, developing his herd along the 

 lines of both beef and milk. He checked the amount of food 

 consumed by each beast with the amount of milk produced or 

 the rate of growth or increase in weight, and compared the amount 

 of butter produced from a given quality of milk, and finally sub- 

 mitted the carcass of his animals to what he called the palate 

 test. He claimed that he effected in his 35 years of breeding 

 such an improvement over his original cattle that with a third 

 less consumption of food they gained a third more weight and 

 that while their milking qualities were unimpaired the milk yield- 

 ed a third more butter. Cattle as bred by Mr. Bates exerted a 

 commanding influence on the Shorthorn breed for nearly three 

 quarters of a century, at one time commanded the greatest prices 

 ever realized for pedigreed livestock and to the present day, 



