ILLUSTRATED STOCK DOCTOR. 
ro 
Regular Markets Established. 
Prom the fourteenth on till the eighteenth century, a large number o? 
Danish oxen were annually turned for pasture into the grassy meadows 
cf North Holland — formerly West Friesland, and sold at the weekly 
North Holland cattle market. The oldest of these cattle markets is that 
of the city of Hoorn. This market was already established in 1311, and 
in 1839 the Danes and.* the inhabitants of the Eyder were allowed by 
Albrecht, duke of Bavaria, to hold a weekly market there. In 1605, the 
Danish cattle market was removed from Hoorn and transferred to Enk- 
huyzen, when, in 1024, the number of 1,179 oxen were sold. There was 
also in Amsterdam a lean-cattle market, beginning in the Spring, in the 
month of April, but held at irregular periods, depending upon wind and 
weather, when cattle were allowed to be conveyed from Denmark and 
Holstein hitherto graze. These were mostly brought by vessel. Mr. 
Heugeveld says : 
“These importations of Danish and Holstein cattle into North Holland, 
to which the ‘herd-book might refer, did not consist of ‘heifers’ but of 
lean oxen, which were pastured on the fertile meadows of the Polders, 
and afterwards sold at the markets of Hoorn, Enkhuyzen and Amster- 
dam as fat cattle. As to heifers, either then or now, having been imported 
from Holstein into Friesland r.ud North Holland for the purpose of breed- 
ing, no such thing is known.” 
To withhold nothing', and to put nothing in a distorted light, I may 
add, that in the middle of the 18th century several importations took 
place into Friesland of Danish cattle, consisting of young calves. This 
was at the time of the raging of the cattle-plague, which desolating dis- 
ease carried off thousands of the finest cattle in Friesland and Holland. 
For the purpose of keeping the cattle trade alive, and to fill the places 
of those destroyed by the plague, small Danish breeds and German cows 
of diminutive size were substituted and crossed Avitk the remaining and 
recovered natives. 
“They were,” says Schcltma, “Danish, Holstein and small German 
cows, of which the greater part were smaller in size than the native race.” 
In the same work Ave find, “that one Avas reduced to the necessity, in 
1769, of purchasing the needful cattle in the county of Bentkeim, in the 
district of Oldenburg and Munster, in Hanover and other parts of 
Germany.” 
In the work, “Present State of Friesland,” it is mentioned that, 
“owing to the cattle-plague, the people Avere compelled to import from 
abroad all kinds of small cattle, chiefly Danish. But, Avkat Avas remark- 
able, hoAvever small and ill-favored these animals might be, Avheu com- 
