FIRST PERIOD OF THEIR HISTORY. I/ 



The necessities of the great landholders began at last to lead their 

 attention to the improvement of their soils. The country had pro- 

 gressed rapidly in population. The now constituted people of Eng- 

 land, under a progressing nationality, had become a mass of breeding 

 humanity. Human life had long been cheap in the sacrifices which 

 had been made by the governing classes, as well among themselves 

 as their serfs, during the wars, both foreign and civil, and also in the 

 frequent executions at the hands of "justice," which then took place 

 for even paltry offenses committed against each other by the common 

 people. Yet the teeming workers at home filled these depleting 

 gaps more rapidly than they occurred, and far beyond, furnished new 

 mouths for consuming the products of the soil as well as hands to 

 aid in its development Along these times an experimenter and 

 writer in agriculture occasionally turned up. " The Whole Art of 

 Husbandry" by Barnaby Googe, was published in the year 1558 ; 

 "Tussers Five Hundred Points of Husbandry" in 1562; Sir Hugh 

 Platt's "Jewell House of Art and Nature" in 1594; Fitz-Herbert, 

 Harrison, and some others, about the same time wrote and published 

 limited works on husbandry. In addition to these more humble 

 authors, illustrious minds, like Bacon, Raleigh, and an occasional 

 compeer of noble birth or station enlightened the people with progres- 

 sive ideas on soils, their management, and articles of production. 



The English world still moved. Yet in all their agricultural 

 advancement we hear nothing of improvement in neat cattle, until 

 near the beginning of the eighteenth century, or shortly previous to 

 the year 1720. It is true that great progress had been made in culti- 

 vating the soil ; wide stretches of the marshy coast along the shores 

 of Lincoln, Cambridge and other counties, had been dyked in and 

 reclaimed from the sea. Considerable progress in science, in the 

 arts, in trade, and various departments of industry had been devel- 

 oped, but with a strange indifference to the improvement of domestic 

 animals, with the single exception of the horse as he was indispen- 

 sable in both war and luxury little attention so far as public knowl- 

 edge was concerned, had been given to either cattle, sheep or swine, 

 except what was acquired in a few widely separated localities ; and 

 even those improvements, wherever they occurred, attracted little or 

 no attention from writers on husbandry, or its interests. Yet we must 

 suppose that intelligent and studious minds had occasionally been 

 at work during the general progress in agricultural advancement, 

 and some attention paid to ameliorating the forms and condition of 

 neat cattle ; for it is impossible that the Short-horns, like the fabled 



