DUAL PURPOSE CATTLE 15 



part of England is also remarkable for being the first where the feeding and fat- 

 tening of cattle, both sheep and black cattle with turnips, was first practised in 

 England. 



Arthur Young having come into possession of the Bradfield Hall 

 Home Farm (six miles south of Bury St. Edmund's), in the follow-, 

 ing January, 1786, visited Aspall Hall, the home of the Chevallier 

 family, to make a close inspection of dairy farms and farming. His 

 "Minutes" are printed in Vol. V, "Annals of Agriculture. They relate 

 to twelve of the twenty-nine parishes which were the headquarters 

 of the dairies of High Suffolk. He says of the polled cattle: 



The points they generally admire here, are a clean throat, with little dewlap ; 

 a snake head ; clean, thin legs, and short ; a springing rib and large carcass ; a good 

 loin, the hip-bones to lie square and even ; and the tail to rise high from the rump. 

 In respect to color no particular rule, except an idea that light ones indicate ten- 

 derness. In size a preference of- small cows. 



In his "General View of the Agriculture of Suffolk" (1792) he 

 says: "This is the description of some considerable dairymen," and 

 he varies it in some particulars. The more noteworthy of these, 

 "udder large, loose, and creased when empty; milk-veins remarkably 

 large, and rising in knotted puffs to the eye," are notable yet, espec- 

 ially in the detail of milk-veins. "The best milkers I have known 

 have either been red, brindle, or yellowish cream colored" the old 

 time designation of this last was "dun." 



Marshall's analysis of the form of the Norfolk "homebred" ap- 

 plied to the form of the best Norfolk Polled of 1860, save that they 

 were hornless, and that their milk-veins were largely developed. Not 

 a few, however, were too high on the leg, with an uneven carcase, a 

 narrow loin, and the backbone ridged. Young noted only one polled 

 herd in his Norfolk "General View," and that would appear to have 

 been a mixture of Suffolk and Scot, as it came from Euston, the Duke 

 of Grafton's seat. Yet Michaelmas sale advertisements of farm stock 

 a great feature in an agricultural area year after year, from 1778, 

 evidence that there were in the county dairies of polled cows. Six 

 such herds were, sold in 1802; and in 1804, when Young was taking 

 his "General View," no fewer than thirteen, most of which were on 

 farms in Mid-Norfolk. Lord Sondes' Elmham Estate had only polled 

 cattle. They had been the favorite "homebred" for nobody knew 

 how long. When early in the 19th centurey he came to Elmham, 

 Lord Sondes asked Mr: Coke's counsel as to what he knew only as 

 "homebreds." The advice received was to hold to the stock. One who 

 had been more than eighty years tenant of a farm at Gately, and was 

 in his hundredth year when he died, on March 1st, 1872, said from 

 his earliest recollection the only cattle on the estate were red and 

 polled. At Elmham Hall, when I was making my enquiries for the 

 first issue of a Herd Book, I was shown by Lord Sondes an oil paint- 

 ing, dated 1836, of two polled oxen which were bred and grazed on 

 the Home Farm. The bullocks were depicted of a good red color, each 

 had a spot of white between the fore-legs, white under the belly and 

 on the jowl, and with a few white hairs in the tuft or crest of hair 

 hanging over the forehead. An inscription read: 



Exhibited at Fakenham Agricultural Show, obtained two prizes, and allowed 

 to be the best homebreds ever shown under four years old. Killed by G. Nicholson ; 

 weighed 187 st. 8 Ibs. 



The earliest mention in an advertisement of such stock as "Nor- 

 folk Polled" occurs in the year 1818. The cows declared to be "al- 

 most unequalled," were bred on the good land which bordered the 

 county on the north side of the river Waveney. 



