88 CATTLE. 



pasture was so overstocked, and eaten so bare, that the cattle were 

 half-starved. 



If Mr. Alton's description of the present improved Ayrshire it) 

 correct, the breed is very much changed, and yet there is so much 

 indistinct resemblance, that a great deal of it must have been done 

 by careful selection, from among the native cattle, and better feeding 

 and treatment ; but when we look closer into the matter, the short- 

 ness, or rather dirainutiveness of the horns, their width of base, and 

 awkward setting on ; the peculiar tapering towards the muzzle ; the 

 narrowing at the girth ; the bellying ; and the prominences of all the 

 bones — these are features which it is impossible for any selection from 

 the native breed to give. While the judge of cattle will trace the 

 features of the old breed, he will suspect, what general tradition con- 

 firms, that it was a fortunate cross, or a succession of crosses with 

 some foreign stock, and that, probably, it was the Teeswater short- 

 horn that helped to produce the improved Cunningham cattle. 



In many other districts of Scotland the attempt to introduce the 

 Teeswater breed, or to estabhsh a cross from it, had palpably failed, 

 for the soil and the climate suited only the hardihood of the High- 

 lander ; but here in Ayrshire was a mild chmate — a dairy country ; 

 the Highlander was in a manner out of his place ; he had degene- 

 rated, and the milking properties of the Teeswater and her capa- 

 bility of ultimately fattening, amalgamated with his hardihood and 

 disposition to fatten, and there resulted a breed, bearing the stamp of 

 its progenitors, and, to a very considerable degree, the good quahties 

 of both. 



Who introduced the present breed is not very precisely ascer- 

 tained ; but the late Colonel Fullarton, in his account of ** The Hus- 

 bandry of Ayrshire," which was published in 1*793, and whose au- 

 thority is of considerable weight in everything relating to it, states, 

 that a gentleman of long experience, Mr. Bruce Campbell, asserts 

 that this breed was introduced by the late Earl of Marchmont. The 

 introduction, then, of this dairy-stock must have happened between 

 1724 to 1740, and so far corresponds with the traditionary account. 

 From wliat particular part of the country they came there appears 

 no evidence. The conjecture is, that they are either of the Teeswater 

 breed, or derived from it ; judging from the varied color, or, from 

 somewhat better evidence, the small head and slender neck, in which 

 they bear a striking resemblance to them. Some breeders, however, 

 have maintained that they were produced from the native cow, 

 crossed by the Alderney bull. It requires but one moment's inspec- 

 tion of the animals, to convince us that this supposition is altogether 

 erroneous. 



These catttle, from which, by crosses with the native breed, the 

 present improved Ayrshire arose, were first introduced on Lord 

 MarchmoFt's estates in Berwickshire, and at Sornbergh in Kyle. A 



