HEREFORD CATTLE 97 



hundred years ago, says of Herefordshire, ' that it 

 doth share as deep as any other county in the 

 alphabet of our Enghsh commodities, though ex- 

 ceeding in W, for wood, wheat, woo], and water,' 

 and that its wheat was worthy to jostle in pureness 

 with that of Heston, in Middlesex, which furnished 

 manchets for the kings of England, and its Wye 

 salmon was in season all the year round, but he is 

 silent as to cattle. While Drayton sings of fair 

 Suffolk's ' maids and milk,' of the hogs of Hamp- 

 shire, the calves of Essex, and how 



Rich Buckingham doth bear 

 The name of bread and beef, 



but he says nothing about Hereford cattle. I have 

 myself but little doubt that the Herefords were 

 descended from Devonshire strains, which were all 

 of a deep brownish red colour, with snow-white 

 markings. The story of the cause of the white 

 faces is curious. It came from an accident, or a 

 sport of the breeding of a white-faced bull, in the 

 herd of a noted breeder of the last century, Mr. 

 Tully, of Huntington, near Hereford. The story 

 runs that Mr. Tully's herdsman came to his master 

 one Sunday, as he was returning from church, and 

 told him that his favourite cow, which was daily 

 expecting to calve, that morning had produced a 

 bull calf ivith a white face, such an event never 

 having happened in his herd before. His master 

 at once ordered him to slaughter the calf, as he 

 dared not let it be known that such a stain of 



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