292 THE BREEDS OF LIVE-STOCK 
the cattle were starved in winter, being scarcely able to 
rise in the spring, and never were in condition fit for the 
market.” Such were the conditions from which the hardy, 
useful race of Ayrshire cattle has come. Culley, who 
wrote a treatise on live-stock before the year 1790, does 
not mention the Ayrshire as one of the recognized breeds 
of the country. From this we may conclude that their 
history as a breed begins some time shortly after the first 
of the past century; previous to that time, they were one 
of the coarse varieties of cattle which formerly occupied 
all of the southern part of the country. 
The earliest recognition which they received as a breed 
was given by a Mr. Aiton, who published a treatise on the 
Dairy Husbandry of Ayrshire, in 1825. He describes 
them, according to Low, as being a puny, unshapely race, 
not superior to the cattle of the higher districts, referring, 
perhaps, to the West Highland or Kyloe cattle. He 
further states that the Ayrshires, at that time, were mostly 
black in color, marked with white in the face, down the 
back and flank, and that few of the cows gave more than 
a gallon and a half or two gallons of milk per day when 
fresh. They were very small in size, so small that the 
average dressed weight of mature animals was but two 
hundred and eighty pounds. 
This description was written, it is asserted, after the in- 
troduction into the Ayrshire district of the cattle descended 
from the crosses made with the Teeswater or Holderness 
stock from Durham, England. The Earl of Marchmont 
is supposed to have brought this foreign blood into Scot- 
land between 1724 and 1740. This importation of a bull 
and several cows was taken to the earl’s estates in Ber- 
wickshire on the east coast of Scotland. 
It has been thought that the Alderney (presumably, 
