THE GALLOWAY BEEED. 21 



It is well known that, although the native breeds of 

 Ireland are now horned, there was at one time a polled 

 race in that country. The most interesting and valu- 

 able testimony of this fact is the following extract from 

 a review of a work on agriculture which appeared in 

 the ' Irish Farmers' Gazette ' in August 1847. The re- 

 viewer says : " A relative of our own, deceased a few 

 years ago at the age of 114, had polled cattle in Ireland, 

 and stated that the same breed had been in possession of 

 his great-grandfather over 200 years before our informant 

 was born. These cattle were chiefly black, and black and 

 white on the back ; occasionally red, and brindled with 

 white stripes ; in some cases all white but the ears, which 

 were red; and he believed there was never any inter- 

 mixture of English or Scotch blood amongst them for the 

 period he alluded to. They possessed the characters of 

 being great milkers and good butter-producers." 



At the present time three distinct and well-defined 

 breeds of polled cattle exist in the United Kingdom. 

 Two, the Aberdeen or Angus, and the Galloway breeds, 

 have their headquarters in Scotland ; and the third, the 

 Norfolk and Suffolk, in England. The first forms the 

 subject proper of this volume. As to the others, a few 

 sentences here may be of interest. There is hardly any 

 doubt that the polled Galloway cattle are the direct but 

 modified descendants of the horned race that formerly 

 occupied the old Galloway district, which comprised an 

 extensive tract of valuable grazing-land in the south-west 

 of Scotland. According to Youatt, the " greater part " of 

 the Galloway cattle were horned — some had medium horns 

 and some were polled — aboxit the middle of the eighteenth 

 century ; while Dr Bryce Johnstone, ia his view of the 

 agriculture of Dumfries, written in 1794, George CuUey 

 (who died in 1813 in his 79th year), in his works on live 

 stock, and Alton, Smith, and Singer, in their views of the 

 agriculture of Ayrshire, Galloway, and Dumfriesshire, pub- 



