368 
Polled Aberdeen and Angus Cattle. 
III. — Chaeacteristics and Popularity of the Breed. 
Formerly the breed, as we have seen, embraced a variety of 
colours. Black, with some white spots on the underline, pre- 
vailed. Some were brindled — dark-red and black stripes alter- 
nately ; others were red ; others brown ; and a few what Youatt 
called " silver-coloured yellow." But since the systematic im- 
provement of the breed was commenced in thorough earnest, 
all shades of colour excepting black have been at a discount, 
indeed almost entirely " dishonoured." Now the cry is, " black 
and all black." It is not easy, however, to wholly obliterate 
features that have at any time been characteristic of a breed ; 
and even in the " best regulated families " a " reversion " to one 
or other of these unpopular shades of colour still occasionally 
displays itself. A shade of brown is not rejected, and not a lew 
of the best-looking and most highly priced animals of recent 
years have had some white about the underline, chiefly around 
the udder. Red or brindled, however, are wholly inadmissible ; 
and when animals of these shades do appear, they are not 
bred from. In most herds one or two red calves have appeared, 
but it is now very rare to hear of a brindled calf anywhere. But 
while these colours are unpopular, it should be remembered that 
they do not denote impurity ; they simply indicate that an 
ancient characteristic of the breed, which modern fancy has 
doomed to extinction, has in the mysterious workings of nature 
been able to temporarily reassert itself. 
And here it may be well to draw a distinction between those 
occasional unwelcome cases of " harking back " to discounted 
colours, and another deviation from the rule which now and 
again appears in some strains in the form of " scurs." These 
" scurs " are modified horns, differing from the latter in that 
they are attached loosely to the head and are much smaller in. 
size. I do not regard them as a recurrence of an ancient 
characteristic of the breed, but rather as denoting contact at one- 
time or another with some horned race. We know that both in 
Forfarshire and Aberdeenshire a race of horned cattle has from 
time immemorial — at least as far back as history and tradition 
carry us — existed alongside the ancestors of the improved Polled 
breed, the former occupying the higher, and the latter the lower 
ground. We have no record of any systematic combination ol the 
two races ; but a hundred years ago, and even less, farmers saw 
no special advantage in keeping any breed absolutely pure from 
generation to generation : they had not then learned — what not 
a few personally interested in the subject have even yet to 
learn — the value of an unstained pedigree. It may therefore be 
concluded that the two breeds were in these days occasionally 
