176 HISTORY OF THE SHORT-HORNS. 



breeding his favorite blooded stock, takes a lively interest in what- 

 ever appertains to their prosperity and value. 



In the year 1830 Mr. Enoch Silsbey, of Boston, Mass., imported 

 the bull Boston (1735), and cow Agatha (alias Boston Cow), by Sir 

 Charles (1440), both bred by Mr. Curry, of Northumberland, Eng. 

 These animals left many descendants, now in several good herds. 



The foregoing memoranda completes the earlier era of Short-horn 

 importations to the United States. The prices for which they could 

 be sold was low compared with their actual value. The spirit in 

 cultivating improved breeds of cattle pervaded few districts of coun- 

 try, and those districts widely separated. Communications between 

 the different breeders were few, and inconvenient, and little of a 

 common, or of rival interests, existed. New England, with a lean soil, 

 for the most part, a rigid climate, and a popular opinion generally 

 prevailing among her farmers that Short-horns were great consumers 

 of food, and tender in constitution (both egregious mistakes, when 

 the proper treatment and early maturit^of the race were considered), 

 looked upon them as interlopers, and introduced by "fancy gentle- 

 men" only, to have something on their farms more extraordinary 

 than their humbler, harder-working neighbors. 



The Kentuckians, and some few stock breeders in Ohio, most of 

 them large landholders, with a rich soil, a mild climate, and abund- 

 ant forage, had readily ascertained their worth, and breeding on the 

 early "Patton" blood with the 1817 bulls, and cows exclusively with 

 their own bloods, and afterwards with purchases from the later Balti- 

 more and Philadelphia importations, not only held their own, and 

 carefully kept records of their pedigrees, but industriously increased 

 both in blood and quality their cherished herds. Still, for several 

 years there was a comparative interregnum in Short-horn progress, 

 and aside from the few New England and New York breeders, as- 

 sisted east of the Alleganies by the persistent efforts of Col. Powel, 

 with his fine herd at Powelton, who kept their pedigrees intact, their 

 efforts would have succumbed but for the occasional demand for stock 

 from Kentucky and Ohio. The cattle going westward then had to be 

 traveled on foot, over hilly and mountainous roads for hundreds of 

 miles' distance, and through a period of several weeks' journey to 

 reach their new homes. There were no railways, and hardly a canal 

 by which cattle could be transported, except the Erie,, through the 

 interior of New York, which was distant and out of thought for a 

 Kentuckian or southern Ohioan to traverse. 



