256 THE BREEDS OF LIVE-STOCK 
cultural Society of England, Vol. 5, page 43, and was 
afterwards copied into the Transactions of the New York 
State Agricultural Society in 1850, and into Volume I of 
the Herd Register of the American Jersey Cattle Club. 
It forms the basis of our knowledge of the early history of 
Channel island cattle. When Channel island cattle were 
first exported to Great Britain, they were collectively 
called Alderneys, because vessels plying between the 
Channel islands and Great Britain cleared from the port 
of Alderney. The cattle were actually very largely from 
the island of Jersey, since that is the largest island and 
contains the most cattle. The local government of the 
Channel islands is administered through two municipali- 
ties, the one, the states of Jersey, comprising the island 
of Jersey alone; the other, the states of Guernsey, com- 
prising Guernsey and the other inhabited islands, of which 
Alderney is one. For more than a century there has been 
no intercommunication of cattle from outside the islands 
or between the two municipalities themselves. This has 
been one of the agencies in the establishment of the two 
breeds, Jersey and Guernsey, which are now and have 
been for many years sufficiently distinct so as to be readily 
recognized. Alderney is in no sense an agricultural island, 
and the few cattle on the island are kept merely as family 
cows by the inhabitants. They come, of course, from 
Guernsey, and are of that breed. There has never been a 
distinct breed known as Alderneys, and the name ‘“‘ Alder- 
ney '’ has been more commonly applied to Jersey than to 
Guernsey cattle. 
295. Early history. — The origin of the Jersey breed is 
conjectural, but it is probably the same as the original 
breed of Normandy. The earliest writers on the cattle of 
this Island assert that they were superior to those of Nor- 
