The Management of a Shorthorn Herd. 
431 
quantities of milk — sometimes warm, sometimes cold — being 
given, seems great, and calls for attention and care. Cleanliness 
of the feeding-pail is also a matter of the greatest importance. 
According to Culley, one great difficulty in his day was to 
avoid what was called " lyery " flesh, a sort of black lean,- " as 
black and coarse-grained as horse-flesh," often abundant, but of 
bad quality and lacking the desired intermixture of fat. An 
opposite difficulty besets us now. The modern tendency is to 
excess of fat and scarcity of lean, so that animals when in poor 
condition are light-fleshed, and when in high condition are 
useful chiefly to the soap-boiler ; and as the results of civilisation 
and education descend from human parent to child, and even 
acquired habits and peculiarities of manner are frequently trans- 
mitted to descendants — in the brute creation propensities arti- 
ficially established become a heritable part of the animal's nature. 
Hence, as I have before suggested, the incalculable importance 
of management in relation to breeding for improvement. 
Instinct has been described as inherited experience ; so breed 
may be called inherited culture. Good land, careful manage- 
ment, the selection of animals which gave the largest and 
readiest return in milk and beef in proportion to the quantity of 
food consumed, and the rejection of animals inclining to the 
opposite of these characteristics, combined to produce what we 
call the Improved Shorthorn. This selection, no doubt, was to 
a great extent unstudied, at least as to the results towards which 
it was tending. The farmer kept for his breeding stock the 
heifers that best pleased him as thrivers and milkers, and 
weeded out those which cumbered the ground ; just as his wife 
stuck to the pullets that proved good layers, and twisted the 
necks of all that could not earn their keep. Each farmer, doing 
the best he could for himself, probably thought little, if he ever 
thought at all, of the advantages which he was heaping up for 
posterity. The extraordinary powers of production thus culti- 
vated through long generations became hereditary ; so strongly 
hereditary, indeed, that they may survive much abuse and 
neglect, but they are not indestructible. " Strains of blood " 
are sometimes spoken of as if they were specific elements, 
analogous to elements in chemistry, always certain to produce, 
in stated combinations, foreknown results ; but have not many 
stock-breeders discovered to their grief how utterly BKEED may 
fail if not supported by skilful MANAGEMENT ? 
In his 'Notes on Fields and Cattle,' 1862, the Rev. W. 
Holt Beever happily illustrates the folly of attempting to deal 
with an improved breed of cattle like the Shorthorn without 
adequate means of maintaining its improved condition. He says 
(page 9) : — " The breed invented by the Collings with such 
