CHARACTERISTICS OF BREEDS. 133 



inated, and wherever else they have been carried, pro- 

 vided their surroundings are such as to meet their 

 vfants. In the rich pastures of Kentucky and in some 

 other parts of the west, they seem as much at home as 

 on the banks of the Tees, and are highly and deservedly 

 esteemed. The Short-horns have also been widely and 

 successfully used to cross with most other breeds, and 

 with inferior mixed cattle, as they are found to impress 

 strongly upon them their own characteristics. 



Without entering into the question of its original 

 composition, or of its antiquity, regarding both of which 

 much doubt exists, it may sufSce here to say, that about 

 a hundred years ago, Charles Colling and others entered 

 zealously and successfully into an attempt to improve 

 them by careful breeding, in whose hands they soon 

 acquired a wide spread fame and brought enormous 

 prices ; and the sums realized for choice specimens of 

 this breed from that time to the present, have been 

 greater than for those of any other. Much of their 

 early notoriety was due to the exhibition of an ox reared 

 by Charles Colling from a common cow by his famous 

 bull " Favorite," and known as the " Durham" ox, and 

 also as the " Ketton" ox, (both which names have since 

 then been more or less applied to the breed, but which 

 are now mostly superceded by the original and more 

 appropriate one of Short-horn,) which was shown in 



