114 AMERICAN CATTLE. 



of Kyle and Cunningham, were of a diminutive size, ill-fed, 

 ill-shaped, and they yielded but a scanty return in milk ; they 

 were mostly of a black color, with large stripes of white along 

 the cliine, or ridge of their backs, about their flanks, and on their 

 faces. Their horns were high and crooked, having deep ringlets 

 at the root, the plainest proof that the cattle were but scantily 

 fed ; the chine of their backs stood up high and narrow ; their 

 sides were lank, short and thin ; their hides thick and adhering 

 to the bones ; their hair was coarse and open, and few of them 

 yielded more than six or eight quarts of milk per day, when in 

 their best plight; or weighed, when fat, more than from 300 to 

 400 pounds avoirdupois, sinking offal.' 



" He very naturally adds — 'It was impossible that these cattle, 

 fed as they then were, could be of great weight, well-shaped, or 

 yield much milk. Their only food in winter and spring, was 

 oat straw, and what they could pick up in the fields, to which 

 they were turned out almost every day, with a mash of a little 

 corn with chaff daily, for a few weeks after calving, and their 

 pasture in summer was of the very worst quaUty; and that 

 coarse pasture was so .overstocked, and eaten so bare, that the 

 cattle were half-starved.' " 



"If Mr. Alton's description of the present improved Ayrshire 

 is correct, the breed is very much changed, and yet there is so 

 much indistinct resemblance, that a great deal of it must have 

 been done by careful selection, from among the native cattle, and 

 better feeding and treatment ; but when we look closer into the 

 matter, the shortness, or rather diminutiveness of the horns, their 

 width of base and awkward setting on — the peculiar tapering 

 towards the muzzle ; the narrowing at the girth ; the bellying ; 

 and the prominence of all the bones — these are features which it 

 would seem impossible for any selection from the native breed to 

 give. While, therefore, the judge of cattle will trace the features 

 of tlie old breed, he will suspect, what general tradition confirms, 



