CHAPTER XXVIII 



THE HEREFORD 



The native home of the Hereford breed of cattle is the county of 

 Hereford, located in the upper part of the lower third of England, 

 with Wales for its western boundary. The county is gently rolling 

 in places, while in other sections it is quite hilly, and superior 

 grazing generally prevails. In this county Herefords are exten- 

 sively bred, almost to the exclusion of all other kinds of cattle. 



The origin of the Hereford, like that of other English breeds, 

 is clouded in obscurity. Some have regarded this breed as 

 descended from the aboriginal cattle. This opinion has been 

 expressed by Youatt and by T. Duckham, the latter once promi- 

 nent as editor of the Hereford Herdbook. In 1788 William 

 Marshall, a well-known English judge of cattle, gave it as his 

 belief that the Hereford might be regarded as the first breed on 

 the island. This was written when the Longhorn and Devon 

 were popular and the Shorthorn was coming into favor rapidly. 

 Some have accounted for Hereford color and type as due to the 

 importation into Hereford by Lord Scudamore, prior to 1671, 

 of some white-faced cattle from Holland or Flanders. Some 

 emphasis has been laid on the fact that an ancestor of Tully, a 

 Hereford breeder, used a white-faced bull in his herd that had 

 come from Yorkshire. Perhaps the wisest argument is the influ- 

 ence of the white cattle of Wales whose blood naturally must 

 have mingled with the darker-colored animals of the adjoining 

 region. Hereford color, however, has varied during the history 

 of the breed. Marshall in 1788 wrote that the prevailing color 

 was red with a bald face. In time a wider range of color crept 

 in, so that in 1845, when Eyton published the first herdbook, 

 he grouped Herefords into four classes, viz. mottled-faced, light 

 gray, dark gray, and red with white face. Twenty-five years later, 

 however, all of the colors but the last were practically extinct. 



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