796 Derivation of the Domestic Polled Breeds. 
name was James McKinnan, and he was a man whose recollections 
seemed always remarkably clear. He had been with cattle as far 
as Norfolk, to St. Faith’s fair; he told me that in the days of his 
childhood, a Norfolk feeder, who bought many of the Galloway 
cattle, fancied those without horns, and would give 2s. 6d. or so 
more for a polled than a horned beast. This set the fashion, and 
the people began first to look for polled bulls, and none other; 
then they preferred polled cows, etc., to breed from, and thus the 
change was effected in, I believe from fifty to sixty years. The 
horns of the Galloway beast were very ugly, drooping, and as thick 
at the point as at the root. I have myself seen one or two beasts 
with horns like that; but nowadays, when horns appear they are 
generally traced to some with a cross with the Irish breed. Those 
that are born polled have a lump in the centre of the forehead, 
which is very hard, and will break another bull’s skull for him.” 
Fria, 2.—“ Galloway Heifer exhibited at Lord Somerville’s cattle show, 1806.”— 
From the Complete Grazier, 1816, 
The late R. Gibson, Assistant Curator of the Museum of Science 
and Art, Edinburgh, Scotland, in the article “Cattle,” in the lm 
edition of “Encyclopedia Britannica,” arranges British cattle into — 
three classes: “(1) Polled cattle, an artificial variety, which may be 
produced by selection; thus, the polled cattle of Galloway 
small horns so late as the middle of last century, but by only 
breeding from bulls with shortest horns, the grandfather of the 
present Earl of Selkirk succeeded in entirely removing these appe?” 
dages.” Gibson was arguing from the history of only one instance. 
Aiton, in his Survey of Ayrshire, 1813, says: “ According t0 
tradition, the Galloway cows were, in ancient times, uniformly pro- 
vided with horns.” ; 
