THE COW TEIBES 73 



is that in the days when man was still a nomad 

 with his herds and long before he had any ad- 

 vanced civilization or written records or even tra- 

 ditions of his work, the cow had already been 

 greatly modified from the wild form and very dis- 

 tinct breed types had arisen. With all our mod- 

 em science and biological theories, we must con- 

 fess that long ago there were simple-hearted un- 

 lettered pastoralists who, nevertheless, were con- 

 structive breeders. Within the last two centuries 

 a race of English and Scotch farmers, Thomas 

 Bakewell, the brothers Charles and Eobert Colling, 

 Thomas Bates, Thomas Booth and his sons John 

 and Richard, and Amos Cruickshank, proved to be 

 men with a genius for judging and selecting ani- 

 mals and endowed with a patience and persistency 

 of purpose which enabled them to accomplish much 

 in that scientific art where haste counts for noth- 

 ing. The first and perhaps the greatest of this 

 line of breeders was Bakewell (1725-1795). He 

 pursued the improvement of cattle, horses, sheep 

 and swine with vast enthusiasm and with a success 

 that in his own lifetime was recognized throughout 

 England. He seems to have possessed an almost 

 uncanny skill in his selection of animals for mat- 

 ing, and he boldly practiced and attributed much 

 of his success to his use of the principles of close 

 inbreeding in order to fix desirable characters. 



After all, however, there is hardly a breed of 

 cattle today that represents the deliberate crea- 



