THE SHORT-HORNS. 143 



to the stage and commenced breeding them. They were young 

 farmers, brothers, and their father had been a short-horn breeder 

 before them. They established themselves as farmers and cattle- 

 breeders about the year 1780, each having separate herds, but 

 ■working more or less together, and interchanging the use of 

 their bulls. Charles the younger, was the more enterprising, 

 but not a better breeder than his brother. "With great sagacity 

 and good judgment, they picked up some of the best cows and 

 bulls from the herds of the older breeders around them, and for 

 many years bred them with success and profit. They early 

 possessed themselves of a bull, afterwards called "Hubback," 

 claimed, by some, to be the great progenitor of the improved 

 short-horns. He proved a most excellent stock-getter while in 

 the hands of the Collings, as well as before they obtained him, 

 and after he left them — perhaps one of the most valuable of his 

 race. He was a pure short-horn, as his pedigree in the first 

 volume of Coates' Herd Book attests, although Berry, in his 

 Youatt history, attempts, for purposes of his own, to throw a 

 cloud upon his lineage. 



The possession of "Hubback" proved fortunate for the 

 Collings, as some of their best cattle traced into his blood, which 

 was more or less participated in by the breeders around them. 

 The blood of this bull 'became so famous, indeed, that any good 

 and well bred beast which could trace its pedigree to him, was 

 counted of rare value. 



We have said that Charles CoUing was a sagacious man, in 

 his line. He knew, as well as the breeders around him, that the 

 short-horns were a superior race of cattle, but their reputation, 

 as yet, was a local one, and he determined to make them known 

 in other counties of England, where they were strangers. For 

 this object, Colling took a bull calf got by "Favorite," before 

 mentioned, made him a stser, and fed him to a bullock, for the 

 purpose of exhibiting him through the country. Berry says, 

 " the ox was the produce of a common cow," but, as he gives 



