THE I£F.REFORDS. C3 



" Mr. Rowlandson, in liis prize report on the 'Farming of 

 Herefordshire,' published in the Journal of the Royal Agricul- 

 tural Society of England, Vol. 32, says, 'the Herefords were 

 originally brown, or reddish-brown.' He also relates the fol- 

 lowing story of the appearance of a white-faced bull in the 

 herd of Mr. Tally, Huntington, near Hereford: 'About the 

 middle of the last century, (1750,) the cow-man came to the 

 house, announcing as a remarkable fact, that the favorite cow 

 had produced a white-faced bull calf. This had never been 

 known to have occurred before, and as a curiosity, it was agreed 

 that the animal should be kept and reared as a future sire ; ' and 

 adds, 'that the progeny of this very bull became celebrated for 

 white faces.' " 



" The same authority (Mr. Rowlandson) gives an interesting 

 extract from history, showing that in the tenth century, (A. D. 

 900,) a celebrated breed of white cattle, with red ears, prevailed 

 in Wales, of which that part of the county of Hereford on the 

 north side of the river Wye formed a portion. He tells us that 

 a law of ' Howell the G-ood ' fixed compensation to be paid for 

 injuries done by one of the princes towards another, at one 

 hundred white cow.s, with red ears, and a bull of the same 

 color; and if the cattle were of a dark or black color, then one 

 hundred and fifty in number instead of a hundred, and adds : 

 'Speed records, that Maude de Brehos, in order to appease King 

 John, who was highly incensed against her husband, made a 

 present to the Queen, of four hundred cows and one bull from 

 Brecknockshire, (in Wales,) all white, with red ears.' These 

 facts, he says, 'are suggestive of the mode in which the white- 

 faces have originated.' " 



This last transaction must have taken place soon after the 

 year A. D. 1200, for John held the throne only seventeen years, 

 having taken it in 1199, and dying in 1216 — a long time for a, 

 white color in cattle to be held in abeyance, and then to crop out 



