THE AYRSHIRE S. 



57 



developed ; but yet there will be some resemblance to the orioinal 

 stock, and the more we examine the animal, the more clearly we can 

 trace out the characteristic points of the ancestor, although every 

 one of them improved. 





THE AYRSHIRE BULL. 



Mr. Alton gives the following description of the Ayrshire cattle 

 seventy years ago : — " Tlie cows kept in the districts of Kyle and 

 Cunningliam were of a diminutive size, ill-fed, ill-shaped, and they 

 yielded but a scanty return in milk ; they were mostly of a black 

 color, with large stripes of white along the chine or ridge of their 

 backs, about the flanks, and on their faces. Their horns were high 

 and crooked, having deep ringlets at the root, the plainest proof that 

 the cattle were but scantily fed ; the chine of their backs stood up 

 high and narrow : their sides were lank, short and thin ; their hides 

 thick, and adhering to the bones ; their pile was coarse and open ; 

 and few of them yielded more than six or eight quarts of milk per 

 day, when in their best plight ; or weighed, when fat, more than from 

 twelve or sixteen to twenty stones avoirdupois, sinking offal." It was 

 impossible that these cattle, fed as they then were, could be of great 

 weight, well shaped, or yield much milk. Their only food in winter 

 and spring was oat-straw, and what they could pick up in the fields 

 to which they were turned out almost every day, with a mash of a 

 little com with chaff daily for a few weeks after cahing, and their 

 pasture in summer vas of the very worst quahty ; and that coarse 

 3* 



