PROGRESS OF IMPROVEMENT. 2/ 



a cow from Mr. Milbank's stock, afterwards belonging to Mr. Sharter, 

 of Chilton, which, when slaughtered, at twelve years old, having pro- 

 duced several calves, her quarters weighed 1540 pounds. She was 

 daughter to the celebrated "Studley bull" (626), he being calved in 

 the year 1737. 



This brings us forward to a period at which some intelligent ink- 

 ling is had of the existence of Short-horn cattle in the hands of 

 known breeders, and of an excellence in style, weight and quality 

 commanding the attention of agricultural historians, and at about 

 what date the known ancestors of our later Short-horn tribes, or fam- 

 ilies can, with a considerable degree of certainty, trace their lineage. 

 It is possible that some errors, both of fact and inference, may have 

 crept into the various accounts in those early days of Short-horn 

 breeding; but we have sufficient evidence of the antiquity of the 

 race, and the lines in which they had descended, down to the year 

 1750. Soon after that time records began to be kept of their lineage, 

 as purity of blood was considered of vital consequence. 



The colors of the cattle in those days were red, of different shades, 

 red and white, pure white, frequently white on the body with roan 

 necks and heads, and roan of red and white intermixed over the 

 body, or in patches, with either more of the white or of the red pre- 

 vailing, as now. What was their exact quality, style or symmetry, as 

 compared with the choice Short-horns of the present time, it is diffi- 

 cult to say, as we have no accurate portraits of them ; but that they 

 combined the main points of excellence belonging to the race as now 

 recognized, and in which still higher improvements over them have 

 been made in the cattle of later years, we can have little doubt. 



Thus, we have seen the Short-horns from the ancient race existing 

 in Northumbria anterior to its conquest by William of Normandy 

 otherwise the Conqueror within a few years after his landing at 

 Hastings in the year 1066, brought down through a series of seven 

 hundred years, steadily improving, with the progress of the English 

 people in their agricultural advancement into a condition of excel- 

 lence then unequaled, probably, by any contemporary race of cattle 

 in the British islands or the neighboring continent, and that excellence 

 attained through their own blood alone, uncontaminated by any 

 foreign element, or if occasionally so, to such small degree as to be 

 unrecognized in the predominating merits of the original race. 



