158 AMERICAN CATTLE. 



Scotch Kyioe, or Highland breed, for two or three crosses, with 

 the same result as Colling, and abandoned it also. Other 

 stealthy crosses may have been made by other early breeders, but 

 with no good results to the short-horns — that they ever acknow. 

 edged. Their advocates claim that they — the short-horns — 

 improve every other breed with which they have been crossed, 

 as an economical animal. That question, however, we shall 

 not argue. 



A general description of a good short-horn, may be as follows. 

 Head — the muzzle fine and yellowish, or drab in color, not 

 smoky* or black ; the face slightly dishing, or concave ; the eye 

 full and bright ; the forehead broad ; the horns showing no black 

 except at the tips, and standing wide at the base, short, oval- 

 shaped, spreading gracefully out, and then curving in with a 

 downward inclination, or turning upward with a still further 

 spread, (as either form is taken without prejudice to purity of 

 blood in the animal,) of a waxy color, and sometimes darker at 

 the t^)s; the throat clean, without dewlap; the ear sizable, thin, 

 and quickly moving; the neck fuU, setting well into the shoul- 

 ders and breast, with a slight pendulous hanging of the skin, 

 (not a dewlap,) just at the brisket; the shoulders nearly straight, 

 and wide at the tops; the shoulder-points, or neck- vein, wide 

 and full; the brisket broad, low, and projecting well forward, 



* It is supposed by many persons that a dark, or black nose, indicates impurity 

 of blood. This is not always so. A black, or even a dark nose is not desirable in a 

 breeding short-horn, because they are decidedly unfasfuonabU^ and to a breeder of 

 choice animals they are unsaleable at almost any price. Yet many of the purely 

 bred short-horns (so admitted) of a century ago, and even less, had some black- 

 noses among them. With all modern breeders, the dark-noses have been sedulously 

 bred out of their herds, their repugnance to them often going so far as to slaughter- 

 ing them in calf hood. Custom has obtained so far as to rule a black-nosed short- 

 horn out of competition with the drab, cream-colored, or yellow-noses, as prize 

 animals. A skin-colored, or white-nose is also objectionable, though not to the 

 pamc extent, as indicative of a want of stamina in the animal, wliile a black, or dark 

 nose indicates hardihood and good constitution. On the whole, althongli not con- 

 clusive of bad, or mixed blood, black-noses are not, at the present day, admissible. 



