380 
THE RUBAI. NEW-YORKER. 
JUAEII 
(Herdsman, continued from page 387.) 
SHORT-HORN CATTLE. 
LEWIS T. ALLEN. 
It is not positively known whence the orig¬ 
inals of this magnificent race came; but it is 
now pretty generally admitted that large, 
coarse animals, something like the Short-horns 
of the present day, were brought over from the 
opposite districts of the continent to England, 
by the DaneB, after their conquest and settle¬ 
ment of that part of the island stretching from 
the counties of Lincoln and Yorkshire to 
Northumberland. Here, in a milder climate 
and richer pastures, added to the probable se¬ 
lection of the best specimens from the herds 
for breeding purposes, these cattle were grad¬ 
ually improved down to about the year 1700, 
chiefly, it is thought, by the rnonkB at their 
monastic establishments, they being generally 
the most enlightened of any class of agricul¬ 
turists and stock breeders in the Kingdom. At 
this period noblemen and gentlemen who were 
the owners of large estates, began to pay more 
attention than heretofore to agriculture as a 
science, and with this was included, as a mat¬ 
ter of course, better care of their domestic ani¬ 
mals, so that by the year 1780 many of them 
possessed fine herds. 
At this time two yonng men by the name of 
Colling, left their father’s establishment and 
commenced farming and stock-breeding on 
their own account in the fertile valley of the 
Tees, the boundary between the counties of 
York and Durham. For the foundation of 
their herds they selected the choicest animals 
they could purchase around them. These they 
bred together with excellent judgment, and by 
the year 1810 possessed, it is said, the two best 
herds of Short-hornB in all England. Mr. 
Charles Colling, the younger of the two broth¬ 
ers, then made up his mind to retire from 
breeding, and accordingly offered his entire 
herd for sale at auction. This consisted of 29 
cows and heifers and 18 bulls and calves. He 
obtained a much higher price for these than 
any cattle ever before fetched in England. Oue 
of the full-grown bulls, Comet, made the as¬ 
tounding price—as it was then considered—of 
1,0C0 guineas ($5,000), while two cows, Count¬ 
ess and Lily, went at 400 and 410 guineas ($2,- 
000 and $2 050). The 47 head realized an av¬ 
erage of $700 each, Short-horn cattle before 
this scarcely averaged over one-third to one- 
half as much. 
Reports of this sale were widely published 
throughout the United Kingdom, and conse-, 
quently had the effect of attracting the atten¬ 
tion of many cattle men to the merits of the 
Short-horns, who had previously known little 
or nothing about them. From this time for¬ 
ward they began to spread much more rapidly 
than ever before, not only in England, Scot¬ 
land and Ireland, but in exports of them to the 
British colonies, to the continent of Europe, 
and to America. In all these countries they 
have bred well and numerously, taking prece¬ 
dence over every other race; not so much, how¬ 
ever, from their more magnificent presence, 
fine, harmonious shape, and beautiful viriety 
of color, as from their being found more gen¬ 
erally useful for a combination of economy in 
rearing, and the production of a superior qual 
ity of beef and milk, and a greater quantity of 
these in proportion to the amount of food con¬ 
sumed. 
Mr. Robert Colling had a draft sale at auc¬ 
tion of his Short-horns in the year 1818, eight 
years after that above noted of his brother 
Charles. This consisted of 81 cows and heifers 
and 10 bulls and calves. These 01 head realized 
an average of about $630 each, not quite so 
much as the sale of Mr. Charles Colling in 
1810. Between this and the year 1858, Short¬ 
horns fluctuated considerably in price wherever 
bred, sometimes selling at comparatively low 
figures, and again rising much higher. In the 
year 1853 they took a fresh start in England, 
and this reacted in America. The prices of all 
of superior quality rose rapidly in every quar¬ 
ter of the worldrwhere they were kept, till they 
finally reached their culminating point at the 
great public sale of Mr. Campbell, September, 
1878, on his farm at York Mills, near Utica, 
N. Y. Here several bulls and cows of his herd, 
bred in the State of New York, out of importa¬ 
tions from the famous Duchess tribe of the late 
Mr. Thomas Bates, of England, fetched the 
enormous sums.of $5,000 to $30,000 each. 
As near.a6 l have been able to ascertain, a 
few Bhort-horn cattle were imported into the 
United States in the year 1785 followed sparsely 
by others down to 1817. From that time consid¬ 
erable importations havj been continually 
made down to the present year. These have 
taken precedence over every other breed, and 
are now spread from Canada on the north, to 
Mexico on the south, and from the borders of 
the Atlantic Ocean on the east, to those of the 
Pacific on the west. The choicest of these 
cattle are.recorded, with full-length pedigrees, 
in the American Short-horn Hird Book, the 
20.h volume of which has just been published. 
This brings the number of bulls up to 41,- 
426, and that of cows to over 50,000. A 
large number of these animals have not been 
offered by their owners for record, which 
omission lessens their value considerably in 
public estimation. These may be equally well 
bred as those found in the Herd Book ; but 
purchasers usually want something tangible to 
show that this ib the fact, and they can only 
know It from the published record. 
Short-horn cattle are the most beautiful and 
grand of all the bovine species. Although of 
the largest sizr, they are exceedingly fine and 
symmetrical in all their points; are hardy, 
thrifty, quick feeders, the best of handlers, and 
mature earlier than any other breed. Properly 
fed from birth, bullocks attain nearly to full 
growth at two and a-half to four years of age, 
and then weigh, when well fattened, from 1.800 
to 2,200 pounds. The cows are proportionally 
large, and those bred from milking families 
excel in the dairy. When dried off and turned 
out to feed, they fatten rapidly. The quality 
of the beef of both is of high class. Toe col¬ 
ors of Short-horns are very handsome, varying 
from pure white to a light or full, rich roan, 
patched red-and-white, and a pure red- The 
skin is bright yellow; the nose orange or clear 
nut-brown. A golden rim encircles the eye, 
which is brilliant and usually somewhat prom¬ 
inent. The horns are quite short, and turn 
down or slightly up from the head. The hair 
is soft, with a thick coat of flue fur underlying 
it from October on to May, or even June. 
Buffalo, N. Y. 
-■-♦ ♦ » — 
ERRORS IN BREEDING. 
D. E. SALMON, I>. V. M. 
Erroneous opinions are the greatest ob¬ 
structions to progress in all callings; they are 
handed down from generation to generation 
and are accepted with an unquestioning and 
simple faith which it seems difficult to obtain 
for that which is really worthy of belief. It is 
an age of investigation, however, and intelli 
gent people are rapidly freeing themselves 
from these 6hackles of the dead past. In agri¬ 
culture, unfortunately, the masses have not 
had the benefit of that liberal education which 
is expected in the so-called learned professions, 
and which gives broader, more liberal and in¬ 
telligent views; and, hence, the farmer is Btill 
weighted down with an incubus of false opin¬ 
ions that frequently prevent success where it 
might be easily attained. 
It is particularly in the management of live 
stock, that the better class of the farmers of 
to-day are allured by false lights which should 
have been laid away with the past generation. 
Such men no longer wait for a certain phase 
of the moon before planting their crops or 
building their fences, as they did but a few 
years ago, but many of them still maintain 
that wheat and oats under certain conditions 
will change into an entirely different species 
of plant (cheBs); and when it comes to their 
stock, they will burn the mouth for lampas, 
knock out wolf teeth for blindness, and talk 
about hollow-horn and wolf-in the-lail in a 
way that almost makes one imagine himself 
back somewhere towards the middle of the 
seventeenth century. 
The subject of breeding is still under a cloud 
equal to that obscuring any other department, 
and, what is worse, the greater part of our 
public teachers seem to be rather more be¬ 
fogged than many of the practical breeders 
who read their articles; and thus all are de¬ 
prived of the many advantages which follow 
from a thorough knowledge of the underlying 
principles—even the fearless innovator and 
bold experimenter, though occasionally reach¬ 
ing brilliant results, is more often discouraged 
by disastrous failures which he cannot fore¬ 
see. 
We have all heardjthat “like produces like,” 
and most of us have given instant assent to it 
as though it were an axiom too plain to be 
disputed; but how few have imagined all that 
follows from this short statement of a great 
law of nature; how few realize that it is the 
sum and substance of the whole science of 
breeding; how few carry it with them in their 
practical work. 
The first violation of this law is in the 
mating of unlike parents. Of course, there are 
cases where, the produce not being intended 
for breed imr purposes, this is i ustifiable, as in 
the production of mules and beef cattle. But 
where animals of a high type are desired with 
a considerable degree of certainty, either run¬ 
ning or trotting horses, milch cows, beef 
cattle, swine or sheep, above all when the in¬ 
tention is to establish a family or breed, the 
parents must be alike. If they are not alike, 
then the offspring cannot be uniform, since 
they may resemble either parent, occupy any 
position between the two or be totally differ¬ 
ent from either. 
The parents, the grand parents, the great- 
grand-parents, and so on, contribute each a 
part of the force which molds the forms and 
aptitudes of the new being. As a rule, the 
force derived from the parents is strongest and 
and prevails, but where these are unlike, there 
is an antagonism which frequently neutralizes 
both and allows the inflience derived from a 
grand-parent or more remote ancestor to be¬ 
come predominant. This constitutes the so- 
called atavism or breeding back, in regard to 
which many have seen so much mystery, but 
which in reality is simply the law of heredity 
extended a few generations backwards by the 
counteracting tendencies of the direct parents. 
The likeness referred to in the law of hered¬ 
ity is essentially one of forces and tendencies 
rather than of form and appearance: in other 
words, it is physiological, not anatomical. To 
be sure, animals which are alike in this sense 
nearly always resemble each other in form and 
color, but the reverse does not hold true; for 
many animals which have external resem¬ 
blances are found to be antagonistic when bred 
together. 
Before a new breed can be established, 
therefore, or an old one improved with any 
certainty, it is necessary to adopt a practice 
that will enable us to mate animals having 
harmonious tendencies, and which will conse¬ 
quently produce a uniform offspring. It is 
here that the majority of breeders have failed, 
for such harmonious animals can only be ob¬ 
tained from the same well-established and uni¬ 
form breed, or from closely related individ¬ 
uals, and our agricultmal literature is so filled 
with warnings against the disastrous result of 
in-breeding that only the few have had the 
courage to adopt it. And though the majority 
of these few have failed because of accidents 
which their ignorance of the principles of 
breeding did not allow them to foresee, a com¬ 
paratively small number have succeeded by 
their wonderful powers of observation and an 
intuitive skill in management, and have given 
us the most valuable breeds that we have. 
And, yet, after numerous examples of the 
most incestuous breeding carried on for 20, 30, 
or 40 years and followed by half a century or 
more of in-breeding, in which lime the finest 
animals that ever lived were produced, and 
breeds hitherto unequaled have been formed, 
we must still listen to a chorus of cro akers 
who insist that there is a mysterious inD lence 
about in-breeding which inevitably destroy j 
form and size and renders the produce sterile 
and diseased. It is time lor us to understand, 
however, that this is nonsense, that in-breed¬ 
ing of itself simply harmonizes the hereditary 
forces and enables the parents to transmit 
their characteristics unchanged to their off¬ 
spring; and that crossing instead of adding to 
the size and vital forcee of the produce by an 
equally mysterious power, only mates antago¬ 
nistic parents and opens the door to variations 
for the reasons already given. 
Bat. it is urged, the majority do fail in their 
attempts to improve animals by in-breeding.' 
There is no doubt of it. The cause is not diffi¬ 
cult to find, however—these men have a faith 
in a miraculous power connected with this 
method, which is to change the scrub into the 
thoroughbred as tbe philosopher’s stone was 
to change the common metals into gold. 
There is as little foundation for a belief in a 
power that improves as there is for one in a 
power tnat destroy p. I -breeding does neither. 
I is only tffect is on the transmission of the 
characters of the parents—if these ate healthy, 
well-formed and robust their offspring will be 
similar : if they are rough, lacking in vitality 
or diseased we may depend upon their trans¬ 
mitting these qualities with the same certainty 
as the more desirable ones. Parents transmit 
by inheritance that which they possess, and in- 
and-in breeding under no circumstances can 
enable them to do differently, either in respect 
to good qualities or bad ones, health or dis¬ 
ease. 
There seems to be a great law of nature that 
it is not good for the higher orders of plants 
or animals to remain for too many generations 
in exactly the same place, exposed to the 
climatic conditions, living upen the same 
character of soil, taking food from the same 
lands. Wheat under Buch conditions " runB 
out"—in other words, it loses in vitality, but 
its best qualities may be restored by taking it 
t > a distance and growing it for for a few gen¬ 
erations on a different Boil. That is, it iB not 
the so-called self-fertilization or Jn-breediDg 
that is destroying it, but it is the sameness of 
the conditions of life. 
This principle has been quite generally over¬ 
looked by breeders, but its effects have caused 
many of the failures that have been attributed 
to in-breediDg. as well as most of the improve¬ 
ments credited to crossiug. The success of 
Mr. Booth, who bred so closely and for so 
many years, is attributed to his breediug from 
bulls which had been for years a long distance 
from home on hire, and thus had the fullest 
benefit of changed conditions of life. Such 
animals are not “ differentiated,” as Mr. Dar¬ 
win and others would have ub believe—their 
forms and tendencies are what inheritance, 
food and exercise have given them, but they 
have an increase of vital force the value ol 
which cannot be overestimated. 
Another class of failures has been due to 
fatty degeneration of essential organs and 
paiticularly those concerned in generation, 
causing ill-health and, in the latter case, ster¬ 
ility. But this is not the direct result of in- 
breediDg. If we take animals that already 
have the fattening prop eneity carried to tuch 
an extent that the muscles are invaded, as 
with our best beef cattle and boes, and keep 
them with little exercise and highly fed, we 
should expect their fattening tendency to in¬ 
crease and the organs of procreation to be fir- 
ally destroyed, for this is an inevitable result. 
O: course, this occurs in a less number of gen¬ 
erations with in-breediog because the tenden¬ 
cies of the parents are more surely transmitted. 
Whatl wish to insist upon, then, is that in- 
breeding and selection are methods by which 
we insure the transmission of the characters 
of one generation to that which followe—they 
originate nothing ; improved or degenerated 
forms, health or disease, good or bad temper¬ 
aments, fertility or sterility result from other 
conditions of life. And this is as true of one 
species of animals as of another; ir-breeding 
the thorongbred horse,when intelligently prac¬ 
ticed,has reproduced the best animals with the 
same certaiaty as it has with thoroughbred 
cattle; and if the breeders of the American 
trotter expect to transmit with any certainty 
the improvements which the careful manage¬ 
ment of a generation of these BDimals origi¬ 
nates, their hopes can only be realized by the 
adoption of this method. It is absurd to claim, 
as some are doing, that in-breeding is fatal to 
horse flesh because it diminishes the bone ; it 
has no such effect, and as a method of breed¬ 
ing it is as valuable with horses as with any 
other species of animal. When the principles 
of inheritance and the eff :cts of the conditions 
of life are clearly understood by the breeder, 
his greatest difficulties will be surmounted, 
and the disastrous effects supposed to be inev¬ 
itable to in-breeding will be as readily averted. 
- 4« ♦- 
WORKING CATTLE. 
A. B ALLEN. 
“ With patient, unremittinf? toil, 
We break the clod of every soil; 
Our harness cheap, no irrain we eat. 
And want no alioes upon our feet.” 
Thus sings the poit, and it is literally true 
with oxen employed in the general work cf the 
farm, as grass alone suffices foi their support 
in Simmer and hay in Winter. Bat if used 
for lumbering in the fo est, or Bteady teaming 
on hird roads, thty must then have a moder¬ 
ate allowauce of grain, In addition to grass or 
hay, and be well shod. 
The wise king of Israel tells us, that “ much 
increase is by the strength of the ox.” The 
farmers of our Northern and Eistern 8tates 
seem to have fully adopted this opiuion; 
for ever since the settlement of the country, 
they have employed oxen much more gener- 
erally for plowing, carting, etc., than horses, 
and why those at the West have not done the 
same 1 am at a loss to imagine. The only rea¬ 
son 1 ever heard them give for using horses 
in tillage rather than oxen was. that the form¬ 
er were quicker in their movements than the 
latter. This depends, however, entirely on 
their breeding. The red grade D won cattle 
of New England, have as fast a walk as a 
smart horse, and are easily trained to trot 
five to Bix miles within the hour; while those 
of a larger size and g eater power, like the 
grade Short-horn aud Hereford, are quite equal 
in pace to the ordinary draft horse. 
Oxen msy be preferred to horseB for general 
farm woik, for the following reasons : 
First. It does not cost so much to breed and 
rear them. 
Second. They can be put to work when 
two years old. which is not safely done with 
any except the largest and most powerful 
class of horses. 
Third. Their harness being simply a wooden 
yoke and a couple of bows, it does not cost 
over one-fourth to one-fifth as much as that 
of a pair of horses. 
Fourth. When a load is so heavy as to re 
q uire a considerable number of aDimai6 to draw 
it, ox teams are especially requisite for this 
purpose. They can be started up gradually, 
and each pair will continue to pull steadily 
till all have put forth their strength, and the 
load then moves off. Not so with horses. Un¬ 
less the dullest and slowest of their kind, 
the pairs start separately or at most two at a 
time. These, not beiDg able to draw the load, 
stop pulling, fall back, and lliui continue 
to balk each other, often rendering it impossi¬ 
ble to get away with the thing to which they 
are attached, when they must be taken off, 
and oxen hitched on in their place to perform 
the task. 
Fifth. If an accident happens to an ox 
which unfits him for further work, such as 
getting a foot crushed by a heavy log or rock 
rolling on it, or a leg broken by stepping into 
a hole, or something else which will occasion¬ 
ally happen, he can be immediately slaugh¬ 
tered and will bring a fair price for beef. Not 
so with the horse, he becomes a total loss, 
save his hide. 
Sixth. Cattle are hardier than hot6e6; do not 
require so much attention ; have no vicious or 
destructive habits, and are not nearly so sub¬ 
ject to diseases of various kinds. 
