CHAPTER VIIL 

 The Various Breeds of Horned Cattle. 



THE SHORT-HORNED, OR HOLSTEIN BREED. 



It is from this breed that we derived the best of our 

 English cattle, which now, in most parts of the 

 kingdom, far exceed the parent stock. They differ 

 much from all the older British cattle in the shortness 

 of their horns. They are wider and deeper in their 

 form, and feed to a much greater weight than most 

 other breeds ; they yield a large quantity of tallow, and 

 their hides are greatly finer in texture, thinner, more 

 compact in fibre, and with a thin coating of hair. 



It is not the province of a work of this kind to 

 enter into an elaborate detail of all the methods 

 pursued by breeders for improving their stock, which 

 would exceed the limits of a treatise of this kind ; but 

 we shall quote the words of Mr Beilby, who, in speak- 

 ing of the improved Holstein breed, says, ''We shall, 

 however, give the general principles which have been 

 laid down, and steadily adhered to, in the improvements 

 of several breeds of cattle, and which have been so 

 successfully brought into practice. The first, and 

 most obvious, is beauty of form, a principle which has 

 been, in common, applied to every species of domestic 

 cattle, and, with great seeming propriety, was supposed 

 to form the basis of every kind of improvement, under 

 an idea that beauty of form and utility were inseparable. 



