Polled Aberdeen and Angus Cattle. 
353 
Breeds and Management,' written about 1835, we find this 
statement: — "There have always been some polled cattle in 
Angus ; the country people call them himlics or dodded cattle. 
Their origin is so remote, that no account of their introduction 
into this country can be obtained from the oldest farmers or 
breeders. The attention of some enterprising agriculturists 
appears to have been first directed to them about sixty years 
ago" — about 1770 or 1780. This celebrated authority gives a 
full description of the Angus doddies as he found them, and 
<letails at length the doings of the first great improver of the 
breed, the late Hugh Watson of Keillor. 
All the early writers on the agriculture of Aberdeenshire 
.speak of the Buchan cattle — those occupying the lower part of 
•the county known as Buchan — as a distinct breed ; but in no 
work dated before the present century have we found it stated 
whether they were polled or horned. Some of these early 
writers give a minute description of the Buchan breed, and yet 
make no mention of horns. It is stated by Keith, in his 
* Diocese of Aberdeen,' dated 1730, that the Thanedom of 
Buchan, which originally extended from the River Don to the 
River Deveron, was so named because it abounded in old 
pasture and paid its rent in cattle, — " for the word in Irish means 
cow-tribute." But while none of these earlier writers actually 
state that the famous Buchan breed of which they make mention 
were polled, it would be impossible for any one who inquired 
anything like fully and impartially into the subject to avoid 
coming to the conclusion that the Buchan humlies of Youatt's 
time and the Buchan cattle of Keith's day belonged to the same 
race ; in fact, that the former were the direct descendants of the 
iatter, and that the latter like the former were "humle," or 
hornless. Youatt states that he found a distinct breed of polled 
•cattle in the lower parts of Aberdeenshire, and he also says that 
while some considered them the produce of Galloways, intro- 
■<luced about the commencement of the present century, others 
said that they had existed in Buchan from time immemorial. 
The former theory of the origin of the Buchan humlies must be 
<lismissed as erroneous, for if such a number of Galloways had 
been introduced into Aberdeenshire about the time Youatt 
refers to, or even long before it, as would have produced the 
vast numbers of polled cattle that are proved beyond doubt to 
have existed in Buchan as far back as 1830, there would 
undoubtedly have been some printed record of the importation. 
We find frequent references in various early works to importa- 
tions of Ayrshire and other southern breeds even before the 
present century had dawned ; but nowhere do we find record of 
any large importation of Galloways. By the commencement of 
