24 HISTORY OF THE SHORT-HORNS. 



labored statement of the pro and con assertions relating to such im- 

 portations; but as nothing positive, beyond tradition, conjecture, 

 hearsay, or supposition has been advanced to establish the fact of 

 such importation, and the act of Parliament and the Custom records 

 positively deny it, further remark is unnecessary. 



To account for so many Short-horns being white in color, some of 

 the cattle writers have asserted that this feature came from the wild 

 white cattle in the parks of Chillingham in Northumberland, and 

 Craven in Yorkshire, which had, almost from time immemorial, run 

 in enclosures there, wild and untamable, as buffaloes. Aside from 

 a likeness in color, these wild cattle had hardly a feature in common 

 with the Short-horns. They were high-horned, black-nosed, light of 

 body, long of limb, altogether opposite to the others. The supposi- 

 tion that the white color in the Short-horns was derived from the 

 wild race is but pretension. On the contrary, there were, and still 

 are, white cattle in Denmark. It is, and has ever been, a legitimate 

 color in the Short-horn race. 



Another fact may be asserted, even admitting that either the Dutch 

 or the wild blood had been crossed into the original Danish blood, 

 the period at which it took place was so long anterior to the time of 

 the writers who claimed it, that even then scarcely a hundredth part 

 of those bloods could be traced into the good Short-horn cattle of 

 their day, and so innnitesimally small could it be now, that fractions 

 can hardly compute it. 



Thus, the claim of the Dutch blood, and the origin of the white 

 color of the wild cattle in the Short-horns, by these writers, may 

 be dismissed as apocryphal. So late as the year 1780, more 

 than ninety years ago, as related on good authority, a tradition 

 was then current among the cattle breeders of Durham and York- 

 shire, that for two hundred years previous, running back to 1580, 

 there had existed a race of superior Short-horns on the Yorkshire 

 estates of the Earls and Dukes of Northumberland,* one of the 

 most ancient families among the nobles of England. Their family 

 name was Percy, and the Barony of Percy was founded in the year 

 1299. The family through its successive Barons, Earls 'and Dukes, 

 was rich, powerful, and influential. Located near the Scottish bor- 

 der, and subjected to the wild raids of the northern clansmen, they 



* Mr. A. B. Allen, in the year 1841, soon after his return from England, where he had spent 

 some weeks in the Short-horn districts, informed us that in Durham an ancient record remains, 

 showing that these cattle, in great excellence, existed four hundred years ago, say in 1440 ; but 

 what the standard of excellence in that remote day was, is now difficult to know! 



