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MANUAL OF MODERN FARRIERY. 
of cattle ; and these also prevent too great an accumulation 
of heated air. 
CHAPTER Y III. 
THE VARIOUS BREEDS OF HORNED CATTLE. 
THE SHORT-HORNED, OR HOLSTEIN BREED. 
It is from this breed that we derived the best of our English 
cattle, which now, in most parts of the kingdom, far exceed 
the parent stock. They differ much from all the older Bri¬ 
tish cattle in the shortness of their horns. They are wider 
and deeper in their form, and feed to a much greater weight 
than most other breeds ; they yield a large quantity of tal¬ 
low, and their hides are greatly finer in texture, thinner, 
more compact in fibre, and with a thin coating of hair. 
It is not the province of a work of this kind to enter 
into an elaborate detail of all the methods pursued bj 
breeders for improving their stock, which would exceed the 
limits of a treatise of this kind; but we shall quote the 
frords of Mr. Beilby, who, in speaking of the improved Hol¬ 
stein breed, says, “We shall, however, give the general prin¬ 
ciples which have been laid down, and steadily adhered to, 
in the improvements of several breeds of cattle, and which 
have been so successfully brought into practice. The first, 
and most obvious, is beauty of form, a principle which has 
been, in common, applied to every species of domestic cattle, 
and, with great seeming propriety, was supposed to form the 
basis of every kind of improvement, under an idea that 
