68 HISTORY OF THE SHORT-HORNS. 



must be remembered that Berry was a partisan, was breeding the 

 Alloy blood in his own herd, and so states the fact, besides illustrating 

 one of his Alloy cows by a portrait in the Youatt history. No new 

 revelations had been made to him of the merits of that blood 

 since first publishing his pamphlet (ten years previous to his Youatt 

 story), in which the Galloway is not mentioned. In view of the 

 whole matter, we are forced to conclude that Berry's claim of the 

 Alloy improvement on the Short-horn blood and quality, was simply 

 a fancy of his own. Had Youatt understood the truth of that pre- 

 tended history and its unfounded assumptions, he would never have 

 given it a place in his book. 



Yet there being no other Short-horn history before the public than 

 his, and so many years had elapsed since the transaction, it was 

 widely copied by almost every subsequent writer on Short-horn cattle, 

 both in England and America, and has been so often repeated in 

 agricultural periodicals, and other papers, that the great majority of 

 cattle breeders, on both sides the Atlantic, have, until a recent period, 

 believed it. There are few well-bred Short-horns now living which 

 have more than a remote dash of the "Alloy" blood in their veins; 

 and what they possess is so minute in quantity as not to be discov- 

 erable to their detriment. 



We have given more space to this pretended " improvement " than 

 it deserves, and but for the belief, so generally prevalent, of its truth, 

 should hardly have mentioned it. Yet, honest history should be 

 vindicated. It is but candid, however, to say, that in the remote 

 earlier breeding of the Short-horns, stealthy crosses with other breeds 

 are known to have been made ; but they are now so distant in time, 

 and as no " improvement " upon the original Short-horn blood has 

 been claimed for any such possible crosses, they need not be made a 

 subject of remark. Alien Crosses, in ages back, have been traced in 

 the blood, or turf horse of England, either on the " cold " blooded 

 native mares of the country, or with selected foreign ones of the 

 neighboring continent; but so many pure bred crosses of English, 

 Arabian, or Barb stallions have since intervened, that the well-authen- 

 ticated pedigrees of modern date are acknowledged by record in the 

 English Stud Books. And so with all our modern Short-horn cattle 

 which can trace their pedigrees into the records of the earlier volumes 

 of the English, and from them into the American Herd Books. All 

 are " Herd Book " animals ; but those who prefer to run pedigrees back 

 to their remotest sources, will make their selections of those strains 

 of blood which best suit their genealogical preferences. 



