48 AMERICAN CATTLE. 



pUe a work on " British Cattle." The book is chiefly compiled 

 from various contributions sent to him by men of knowledge 

 and experience on the subject, with accounts obtained from 

 other authors, and their publications, aided by personal observa- 

 tions of his own. It is an excellent book, on the whole, and 

 contains, probably, a more correct body of information in that 

 line than can be drawn from any other individual source, though 

 not altogether free from error, or prejudice. "We have drawn a 

 share of our information from Youatt, some from other well- 

 known British waiters of the last century, others in the present 

 century, as well as some from American writers. We do not 

 name all our authorities — very few, indeed — as many of them 

 were authorities to Youatt, as well as to our own writers, and 

 we find more or less of them quoted and repeated by all. It 

 is sufficient to say, that we have examined and analyzed, with 

 much care, these various authorities, preserving such as bore the 

 semblance of truth and probability in their accounts, and reject- 

 ing those only, not necessary to our purpose. 



British cattle, by general consent of these authors, appear to 

 be subdivided into four distinct classes — the middle-horned, long- 

 horned, short-horned, and polled, or hornless. They all have, or 

 untU. recently, had their own various localities and districts in 

 the several parts of England and Scotland, where they have 

 existed from a remote period. Each were favorites among the 

 farmers and breeders of their homes, rarely taken out of their 

 districts, except for market, and until after the middle of the last 

 century, like the people who reared them, strangers to other 

 parts of the kingdom, and migrating back and forth no farther 

 than to the nearest market towns, or district fairs. Thus they 

 became homogeneous, deeply interbred among their own tribes, 

 and closely retaining their own distinctive qualities, uncontami- 

 nated by the blood of other breeds, and transmitting their quali- 

 ties and characteristics with a pertinacity and truth, of which 



