794 Derivation of the Domestic Polled Breeds. 
Thirdly, he was one of a number (it will be seen, from the means 
he recommended, at that early date, to eradicate a blemish) who 
were doing their best to obliterate the old native polled race of 
such a good quality. He was isolated in Buchan, with only the 
Buchan Polled breed before his eyes, surprised at the want of the 
horns he found there to be indigenous, and thus attempted to ex- 
plain an “ isolated” instance, as he thought it; whereas, if he had 
had a wider acquaintance with the innumerable polled races that 
had existed in all time, he would have attempted some more scien- 
tific explanation—one which I may say here, remembering Dar- 
win’s allusion to him, has escaped or baffled that prince of natural- 
ists himself. 
But the “hornless breed of Buchan creatures” survived the 
attempt made to obliterate the blemish which had existed for such 
a length of time, up till 1799, and which had now been setting the 
fashion for all breeds. Dr. Anderson’s overseer, who began to deal 
in 1801, has recorded the existence of polled cattle in Buchan 
during Dr. Anderson’s time, and since then they have become the 
‘most famous of polled races. i 
Now I have brought Dr. Anderson into line, and made him 
yield testimony to the early existence of the polled cattle of Aber- 
deenshire, which is about the most important piece of evidence that 
has been produced on this subject, and is most interesting. 
THE GALLOWAY BREED. 
Up to about the beginning of the last quarter of last century 
the Galloway cattle were horned, and during the middle of that 
century were “universally” so. The earliest certain account of them 
as polled is given by Marshall, who wrote in 1782. He says that 
the best were at that date mostly polled. Andrew Wight, in 1746, 
mentions them more promiscuously. : 
The late Sir B. T. Brandreth Gibbs, Hon. Secretary of the Smith- 
field Club, etc., etc., as General Superintendent of the British Agr- 
cultural Section of the Paris Universal Exhibition of 1878, in the 
“Short Introductory Notes on Some of the Principal B of 
Cattle, Sheep and Pigs,” written by him and prefixed to the Cata- 
logue of the British Section, says: “Occasionally some have 
“slugs’ or stumps, which are not affixed to the skull.” Dr. Flem- 
