194 CATTLE-BREEDING. 



case, where a cross is made and then a return 

 is had to a single breed exclusively. In the 

 same year (1817) Hon. Henry Clay imported 

 some Hereford cattle to Kentucky, and they, 

 too, after being crossed impartially with Short- 

 horns and Longhorns and mixed Longhorn- 

 Short-horn bulls, passed out of sight, being lost 

 in the ever-increasing tide of Short-horn blood. 



Crosses have been very extensively used by 

 sheep-breeders to improve and modify their 

 flocks; so much so that most of the cultivated 

 breeds have at one time or another suffered an 

 infusion of alien blood 



For instance, the Hampshire sheep were 

 originally horned, large, and coarse. In order 

 to improve them a movement began, soon after 

 the great improving impulse of the last' century 

 had reached a good development and shown 

 what it was possible to do in bettering the 

 character of the British flocks, by using South- 

 down rams in the flocks. The cross proved a 

 happy one and the Hampshire breed was cer- 

 tainly improved by it. They are now finer in 

 the bone, wider in the back, rounder in the 

 barrel, and of better quality; and, moreover, 

 have lost their horns, being in this particular 

 assimilated to the Southdown type. 



Again, in Wiltshire we have a somewhat sim-, 

 ilar method. In that country " where the same 

 old horned stock originally prevailed the im- 



