THE CATTLE, SHEEP, &C. OF CORNWALL. 569 
Devon; this breed appearing to approximate, and to be better 
adapted to the Cornish soil than any other. The cheese that is 
made in the county is very little, and that little of a very bad 
quality. But she is notorious, with her sister county (Devon¬ 
shire), for that well-known production of the dairy “ clotted cream” 
so termed in consequence of the thick consistence to which raw or 
unscalded milk is reduced, by a peculiar operation, imperfectly 
practised everywhere else, though many attempts have been made. 
The Danmonians were famous for making curds and butter of 
their milk, from the earliest times; “ densantes in acoremjucun- 
dum et pingue butyrum” —Pliny. 
“ In the eastern counties it is customary to skim off the cream 
from the milk without its being previously scalded; but in Devon 
and Cornwall, milk intended to produce either cream or butter, is 
strained through a cloth or bunting sieve into shallow earthen or 
block tin pans, containing from two to five gallons, wherein it re¬ 
mains for twelve hours; after which, the pans, if there be more 
than one, are severally placed and kept over a slow fire, until the 
cream rises to the top in a wrinkling furrowed pellicle, about the 
eighth part of an inch in thickness. They are then removed from 
the fire, and taken into the dairy, in which, as the milk cools, the 
cream becomes firm and clotted*.” 
The Cornish oxen, under kind and generous treatment, are 
easily familiarized and rendered docile. The Cornish plough has 
from time immemorial been worked by a team of oxen, occasion¬ 
ally with horses before them, but oftener without any. They arc 
likewise used in carriages, for which we have butts and wains, 
instead of carts and waggons, as being more suitable both to our 
narrow roads and hilly lands. They are always worked in yoke, 
and are remarkably tractable, receiving names according to their 
colour or supposed properties ; as brown, sprightly, hearty, tyrant, 
&c. &c. 
But the practice of employing cattle in husbandry is of late 
years getting out of practice, particularly among our most respect¬ 
able farmers, where the most approved methods of husbandry 
prevail. Our parochial roads, instead of being narrow and intri¬ 
cate as they were formerly, are now tolerably good, with few ex¬ 
ceptions, throughout the county. Carts and waggons drawn by 
fine teams of horses are now commonly employed, and men who 
are worthy of the name of husbandmen never employ cattle on the 
roads. Cornwall not being a grazing county, and therefore not 
adapted to the purpose of bringing forward cattle for the market, 
numbers of them are purchased at the different fairs by Somerset 
Gilbert's History of Cornwall. 
