246 HISTORY OF THE SHORT-HORNS. 



the earlier ones, their produce have been improving ever since with 

 the American breeders. We venture the assertion that our American 

 average is fully equal in their general qualities to the English. 

 Those of forty, or even thirty years ago, as a rule, were inferior to 

 what they are now. We remember many of the imported ones, and 

 their looks- are yet as familiar to our mind, as they were to our eye 

 at the time we saw them. Their handling was less elastic ; although 

 their heads and necks were good, their chests were not so broad and 

 deep ; their shoulders less expanded and smooth ; their crops more 

 depressed, and they exhibited a less full and graceful outline gen- 

 erally. Their defects were more striking, and what should comprise 

 their chief excellences were not so fully developed as now. We 

 might name sundry animals, bulls and cows, with which we were 

 familiarly acquainted, winning first prizes in the annual exhibitions of 

 Agricultural Societies, twenty-five years ago, which no owner of such 

 as they would now venture to lead into a show ring ; and still, de- 

 scendants of those animals at the present time take the highest honors ; 

 but they do so with fresher and costlier strains of blood in their 

 veins, and by a more skillful attention being paid to their breeding 

 than formerly. Our American breeders have within the past thirty 

 years acquired more skill in the propagation of their herds, and as a 

 consequence improved their stock in a corresponding degree. They are 

 better judges of the qualities of animals than were the breeders of fifty, 

 forty, or even less years ago ; yet the older breeders were deserving 

 great credit for their efforts, for fhey had it all to learn, while their suc- 

 cessors have had the benefit of their experience and judgment, so far 

 as they had acquired it. Added to these advantages, the later breed- 

 ers have, with a wise foresight, opened their purses and bought animals 

 at prices which in the days of the earlier ones would have been 

 deemed ruinous, so far as any returns for their outlays could be 

 expected. Such, also, has been the experience in England. Although 

 Comet brought $5,000 at Charles Colling's sale in the year 1810, bulls 

 and heifers equally thorough-bred and begotten by his own sire, 

 sold for less than a fourth of his price. The price paid for Comet 

 was said all over England to be extravagant, and such a sum for a 

 bull was never again reached, so far as we can find, until more than 

 forty years later,, when Mr. Thorne, of New York, bought Grand Duke, 

 and 2d Grand Duke, descendants of Comet, at the same bold, and as 

 then considered, exhorbitant prices. One or more bulls have since 

 been sold in England for Australia at still higher figures ($7,500 for 

 one, if we recollect aright), while some remarkable cows have been 



