BULL. 677 



f liis vassals to execute his commands, found it his interest to en- 

 courage those employments that favoured that disposition; that 

 vassal, who made it his glory to fly, at the first call, to the slandard 

 of his chieftain, was sure to prefer that employ, which might be 

 transacted by his family with equal success during his absence. 

 Tillage would require an attendance incompatible with the services 

 he owed the baron, whHe the former occupation not only gave lei- 

 sure for those duties, but furnished the hospitable board of his lord 

 with ample provision, of which the vassal was an equal partaker. 

 The relics of the larder of the elder Spencer, are evident proofs of 

 the plenty of cattle in his days ; for, after his winter provisions may 

 may have been supposed to have been mostly consumed, there 

 were found, so late as the month of May in salt, the carcases of not 

 fewer than 80 beeves, 600 bacons, and 600 muttons. The accounts 

 of the several great feasts in after times, afford amazing instances 

 of the quantity of cattle that were consumed in them. This was 

 owing partly to the continued attachment of the people to grazing ; 

 partly to the preference that the English at all times gave 

 to animal food. The quantity of cattle that appears from the latest 

 calculation to have been consumed in our metropolis, is a suffi- 

 cient argument of the vast plenty of these times ; particularly when 

 we consider the great advancement of tillage, and the numberless 

 variety of provisions, unknown to past ages, that are now intro- 

 duced into these kingdoms from all parts of the world. 



Our breed of horned cattle has in general been so much improv- 

 ed by a foreign mixture, that it is difficult to point out the original 

 kind of these islands. Those which may be supposed to have been 

 purely British, are far inferior in size to those on the northern 

 part of the European continent ; the cattle of the Highlands of 

 Scotland are exceedingly small, and many of them, males as well as 

 females, are hornless : the Welsh runts are much larger ; the 

 black cattle of Cornwall are of the same size with the last. The 

 large species that is now cultivated through most parts of Great 

 Britain, is either entirely of foreign extraction, or our own im- 

 proved by a cross with the foreign kind. The Lincolnshire kind 

 derive their size from the fiolstein breed, and the large hornless 

 cattle that are bred in some parts of England, come originally 

 from Poland. 



About two hundred and fifty years ago there was found in Scot- 

 land a wild race of cattle, which were of a pure white colour, and 

 had (if we may credit Boethius) manes like lions. I cannot but 



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