THE COLLING BROTHERS. 31 



exhibitions are improperly called fairs?) where beasts were taken 

 to market for sale, were then common in England, as now, and prob- 

 ably many well-bred cows and heifers were brought there by their 

 breeders, and owners, and the breeders of choice cattle bought 

 them, when their blood and quality were considered worthy of such 

 use, and bred to their choice bulls. From such market cows descended 

 the more immediate ancestors of many celebrated Short-horns since. 

 It is no disparagement to those nameless cows that such is the fact, 

 as very few pedigrees can now be traced by name, on the female side, 

 beyond the year 1780, and but comparatively few, among a great 

 majority of them, beyond the year 1800. 



To show what was the general character of the Short-horns of the 

 time above written, we quote Bailey, who made an agricultural sur- 

 vey of Durham, and wrote in the year 1810: "The cattle on both 

 sides of the Tees have been known by the appellation of the Tees- 

 water breed. About 1740, their color was red and white, and white, 

 with a little red about the neck, or roan." In "Thornton's Circular," 

 of January, 1869, published in London, in an account of "Ancient 

 Short-horns," the'writer remarks: "Mr. John Wright, born at Low- 

 fields, near Catterick, in 1784, a well-known judge, and who was 

 originally proposed as the author of the Herd Book, says, that his 

 earliest recollections of the Short-horns were large, massive, expan- 

 sive cows, with great width and substance, hardy constitutions, mostly 

 red and white spotted, white bodies, necks spotted with red or roan, 

 ears red and head white, frequently black noses, and rather long, 

 waxy horns." Although these recollections may run down near or 

 quite to the year 1800, it is probable that they give the features 

 generally prevailing among the Short-horns of the time. 



Although we might give further accounts from different sources 

 meager, however, at the best of the Short-horns as they existed 

 anterior to, or about the period of 1780, it is hardly worth while to 

 cumber our pages with simply collateral testimony, (for that is all 

 there would be of it,) and we proceed to a new era in their history, 

 from which we are able to gather decided particulars of fact, irre- 

 spective of tradition, or common rumor. 



THE SHORT-HORNS AT AND AFTER THE YEAR 1780 ROBERT 

 v AND CHARLES COLLING. 



The reason why, in our previous remarks, we have made, and now 

 again make, a point of the year 1780, or thereabouts, is, that near 

 that period an era commenced by the action of a new class of men, 



