WHEN -THE IMPROVEMENT BEGAN. 23 



sound to the distressed Bishop Aldwinus and his brethren, who 

 thereby had intelligence that their journey's end was at hand. 

 Being guided thither by these women, they at once constructed a 

 little church of wands and branches, wherein to lay their Saint till a 

 larger and more solid building could be raised to enshrine him. This 

 was soon done by the erection of a Cathedral of moderate size, which 

 in the year 1093 was taken down, and the corner-stone of the present 

 magnificent Durham Cathedral was then laid. After being finished, 

 in gratitude to the milkmaids and cow, by whose means the final rest- 

 ing place for the holy body of St. Cuthbert had been found, their 

 statues were placed in a conspicuous niche of the north-east tower, 

 where it is to be hoped they will be allowed to remain as long as this 

 mighty fane shall stand, whose foundations, in accordance with the 

 instructions to us of scripture, have been laid upon a rock. " 



It is unnecessary to say more of the early establishment of the 

 ancestors of the present Short-horn race in the north-eastern counties 

 (Northumbria) of England, for some centuries occupied by the Danes 

 before the conquest. 



WHEN BEGAN THE IMPROVEMENT IN SHORT-HORNS, x 



It has been asserted by some English cattle writers that it was 

 early after the year 1700 that the improvement of their cattle was 

 begun by the breeders, and that such improvement was aided by the 

 importation of a bull or bulls from Holland. This assertion, how- 

 ever, is merely a conjecture. No official record of the introduction 

 of any such bull or bulls has been found ; and as no evidence of 

 any such occurrence being even probable has been authentically 

 recorded by revenue officials along the eastern coast of England in 

 the counties where such importation would have been made, if at all, 

 in a search extending near a century back of 1750, the conjecture or 

 supposition of the introduction of the Dutch bulls may be not only 

 doubted, but denied.* Indeed, no positive instance of any such im- 

 portation is asserted by the cattle historians of that day, and the 

 evidence of such being the fact was only hearsay. Aside from this 

 negative testimony to the contrary, a statute of Parliament enacted 

 in the eighteenth year of Charles II. (1666), positively forbade the 

 importation of cattle from abroad into England, and that statute was 

 strictly enforced until the year 1801, a time fifty years or more sub- 

 sequent to the pretended importation of any bulls or cows from 

 Holland. We might, from documents now before us, go into a 



* " Youatt's Cattle "American Edition Article Short-horns. 



