58 DOMESTIC ANIMALS. 



the offal, and strikingly defective in the substance of girth in 

 the fore-quarters. As milkers they were most excellent, but 

 when put to fatten, as the foregoing description will indicate, 

 were found slow feeders, producing an inferior quality of meat, 

 not marbled or mixed as to fat and lean ; the latter sometimes 

 of a very dark hue. Such, too, are the unimproved Short 

 Horns of the present day." 



The improved Short Horns are even more celebrated as 

 feeders than as milkers, and in other respects differ widely from 

 the original breed. 



"The colors of the improved Short Horns," Mr. Youatt says, 

 " are red or white, or a mixture of both ;" "no pure improved 

 /Short Horns,' 1 '' he adds, "are found of any other color but 

 those above named. That the matured Short Horns are an 

 admirable grazier's breed of cattle is undoubted ; they are not, 

 however, to be disregarded as milkers ; but they are inferior, 

 from their fattening qualities, to many others as workers." 



Mr. Dickson, an eminent cattle breeder, thus eloquently de- 

 scribes the Short Horn : 



" The external appearance of the short-horned breed is irre- 

 sistibly attractive. The exquisitely symmetrical form of the 

 body in every position, bedecked with a skin of the richest 

 hues of red, and the richest white approaching to cream, or 

 both colors, so arranged or commixed as to form a beautiful 

 fleck or delicate roan, and possessed of the mellowest touch ; 

 supported on clean, small limbs, showing, like those of the race- 

 horse and the greyhound, the union of strength with fineness; 

 and ornamented with a small, lengthy, tapering head, neatly 

 set on a broad, firm, deep neck, and furnished with a small 

 muzzle, wide nostrils, prominent, mildly-beaming eyes, thin, 

 large, biney ears set near the crown of the head and protected 

 in front with semicircularly bent, white, or brownish colored 

 short (hence the name), smooth, pointed horns ; all these parts 

 combine to form a symmetrical harmony, which has never been 

 surpassed in beauty and sweetness by any other species of the 

 domesticated ox." 



