The Early Fattening of Cattle and Sheep. 
51 
that their grandfathers, far back in the last century, owned 
excellent herds of the red cattle of the country which they had 
greatly improved. Arthur Youug was fond of telliug the same 
story, and his Annuls contain interesting accounts of the 
herds of his friends in Sussex, aud of their working oxen and 
the mountains of beef they made at six or seven years old. 
It would seem ungracious not to mention the Polled Angus, 
the breed of William McCombie, with which he won at the 
Paris International Exhibition of 1878 the premier prize for 
" cattle of any breed for beef-production," and specimens of 
which he often sold to the butchers at 55Z. each. It is true 
that great weights do not alone support the argument as to the 
rapid move of breeders in the direction of early maturity in 
recent times. But a grand prim of 2,500fr. was offered at 
the same Exhibition for animals for breeding purposes, and a 
prisa d'aptitude of 2,500fr. for animals for beef-producing pur- 
poses, and both were carried off by a group of two-year-old 
Polled Angus cattle, which were described as being " as even, 
plump, and ripe as a cherry." 
I shall name last, in connection with the transference and 
increase of early maturity, the illustrious Shorthorns. The first 
volume of their Herd-book appeared in 1822 ; their fame as a 
grand breed of Teeswater cattle was known to travellers as far 
back as the year 1700, about a hundred years before Robert 
and Charles Colling, the miscalled founders of the breed, com- 
menced their sales of high-priced stock. This is the most wide- 
spread of all the breeds, the best adapted for purely artificial 
systems of farming, the least fastidious in regard to climate, 
soil, or lodging. We expect much of our fatting cattle ; we 
crowd them into small yards — as I saw the other day at a 
covered homestead, where the animals had little more than 
standing-room — so that the largest possible number may yield 
their beef and manure under the least spread of roof. We even 
tie them by the neck, so that the frightened physiologist ex- 
claims, " You allow your young bullocks no exercise — they cannot 
possibly develop muscle so ; " and yet, somehow, the muscle 
comes. I suppose it is by hereditary tendency. " You allow 
your young fatting animals," says the physiologist, " no oppor- 
tunity of acquiring respiratory capacity. Summer and winter 
you allow them no exercise, and only one result can follow — ■ 
you will ruin your breeds." Probably this would have hap- 
pened loug ago, but for the wonderful adaptability of the Short- 
horns, and for the fact that the early fattening of steers cannot 
affect breeding stock which does not share the treatment. 
The Shorthorn breed needs no praise. It equals, if it does 
e 2 
