HISTORICAL TESTIMONY. 165 



ancient strains in high excellence, the Booth 

 name claims a place of extraordinary promi- 

 nence in Short-horn annals. The sands of a 

 century of continued labor in this one field are 

 almost run, and the results of that long period 

 are incalculable. This at least may be said, 

 without overpraise, that the work which the 

 Booths have done claims a higher praise when 

 measured by its excellence than when meas- 

 ured by its quantity and the length of time in 

 which it has been in progress. Thus, to quote 

 only a single example of the estimation in 

 which Booth cattle have been held, Mr. Dixon 

 says that "Old breeders tell us that the sight 

 of the Y,oung Albion cows at Studley, in Mr. 

 Richard Booth's day, is one of which they have 

 never seen the equal." 



The practical beginning of Mr. Thos. Booth's 

 career in 1790 was the hiring of the bulls Ben 

 (70) and Twin Brother to Ben (660) from Mr. 

 Robert Colling. The'se bulls were by Punch 

 (531), he by Mr. Robert Calling's bull Broken 

 Horn, and out of a cow by the same bull; their 

 dam was a Foljambe cow out of a Hubback 

 cow. Thus he put himself in the direct line of 

 the Colling movement of improvement a line 

 which he continued to pursue. Previous to 

 1790 Mr. Booth had owned and bred some 

 of the old-fashioned Teeswater cattle; in other 

 words, the so-called native or unimproved 



