THE HEREFORDSHIRE BREED. 363 



otherwise, we know nothing from any authentic records. 

 When we first obtain accounts of them, they appear to have 

 been of a good size, but of mixed characters. The Dairy 

 was at a former period largely pursued in Herefordshire, the 

 effect of which must have been to collect together animals of 

 mixed descent, and only agreeing in the common character 

 of yielding much milk. Many of them were black, many red, 

 and so far were they from exhibiting the common charac- 

 ters of a breed or family, that a skilful observer, who saw 

 them late in the last century, believed them at first to be a 

 mixture of Welsh Cattle and Long- horns, although it appears, 

 from the remains of the older race which yet exist, that the 

 greater part of them consisted of a race of red cattle, which, 

 in colour, and in the upward curvature of the horns, re- 

 sembled the coarser kinds of Devons. 



But whatever were the characters of the former cattle of 

 Herefordshire, the breed, as it now exists, owes all its repu- 

 tation to modern changes. About the year 1769, the late Mr 

 Benjamin Tomkins began a system of breeding, which ulti- 

 mately exercised a great influence on the stock of this part 

 of England. It appears that size, and adaptation to the 

 dairy and the purposes of labour, were then the properties 

 chiefly sought for by the breeders of Herefordshire. Mr 

 Tomkins, when a young man, was in the employment of an 

 individual, afterwards his father-in-law, and had the especial 

 charge of the dairy. Two cows had been brought to this 

 dairy, supposed to have been purchased at the fair of King- 

 ton, on the confines of Wales. Tomkins remarked the ex- 

 traordinary tendency of these animals to become fat. On 

 his marriage he acquired these two cows, and commenced 

 breeding from them on his own account. The one with more 

 of white, he called Pigeon, and the other, of a rich red colour, 

 with a spotted face, he called Mottle ; and it is remarkable 

 that the marking of the two cows may be distinguished in 

 their descendants at the present day. Mr Tomkins appears 

 to have selected good cows where he could obtain them in 



