278 
Rise and Progress of Hereford Cattle. 
finning the belief that this county of the light red sandstone is 
the earliest home of the Middle-horn. 
. Some are of opinion that the cattle of the county were ori- 
ginally brown or reddish-brown, from Devon or Normandy, and 
that the appearance of a white-faced bull-calf at Huntington in 
the middle of the eighteenth century, was deemed akin to a 
prodigy by the Tully of that day. Allusions are also found in 
old chronicles to white cattle with red ears on the north side of 
the Wye, with which the Welsh princes were wont to com- 
pensate each other for injuries, or soothe an angry king. It is also 
on record that Lord Scudamore, who died in 1671, introduced 
red cows with white faces from Flanders, which may have 
cropped up in the Tully bull-calf; so that, after all, the theory 
of some of the Hereford breeders, that the pride of their pastures 
and their platters have as indefeasible a two hundred years' title 
to the soil as the " Duchess " tribe to Stanwick Park, or the Long- 
horns to Bosworth Field, may be correct in the main. Old 
cattle-books have it that one William Town sold " nine Hereford 
oxen for on August 25th, 1694; and then a veil, which no 
chronicler can lift, is drawn over their history till about 176G, 
when Messrs. Tomkins (who was also a great breeder of Ryeland 
sheep), Weyman, Yeomans, Hewer, and Tully, stood out from 
their fellows, as the special champions of a county breed. 
The late Mr. John Monkhouse, of The Stow, was, at the time 
of his death, in the autumn of sixty-six, the oldest breeder- 
link with the past. Speaking to us of 1809 when he and 
his trusty cousin, Mr. Hutchinson, left Cumberland, to push their 
joint fortunes on a Radnorshire farm, he thus epitomised the 
Herefordshire breeders, who were then giants in the land : — 
" I found Ben Tomkins, Price of Ryall, and Smythies of the 
Lynch, the great mottle-face men ; Tully and Knight had the 
best light greys ; and Walker of Burton Court, Hewer, Yeomans, 
and Weyman, with his strong-boned tribes, were the most noted 
for the white-faces. We young fellows thought we should like 
to lay in a stock from Mr, Ben Tomkins, and so we drove over 
to see him. He asked us a hundred guineas — not pounds, mind 
you — for an in-calf heifer, to calve at Christmas, and that was all 
the satisfaction loe had." 
Mr. Eyton did not commence his Herd-Book until 1845, and 
then the jealousy as to cattle caste between the rival breeders 
of the white and the mottle-faces not only went far towards 
jeopardising its success, but almost strangled it in its birth. The 
mottle-faced party seem to have brought most influence to bear, 
and, as Mr. Duckham has pointed out, by leading off with 
"Leopold" (1), and throwing back "Aaron" (82), they dis- 
arranged the whole of the numbering. It was not, however, a 
