I 
THE AYRSHIRE BREED. 
PLATE XIII. 
COW, Five Years Old, the property of Mr Finlay, Lyonstone, Maybole; Bred in the Upper Dis¬ 
trict of Ayrshire. 
01 the cattle of these Islands, reared especially for the uses of the Dairy, those of but a few districts present such an affinity 
in conformation and habits as to be regarded as constituting breeds or families. But the cattle of Ayrshire, which are reared 
exclusively for the supply of milk, have spread over a large tract of country, and, by continued intermixture with one another, 
acquired such a community of characters as to form a distinct and well-defined breed. 
The county of Ayr, stretching along the estuary of the Clyde, and the Irish Sea, for about eighty miles, consists in part of 
moory hills, in part of an undulating surface of common clay, intersected by narrow vales, and in part of a flat tract nearer the 
coast, bounded towards the sea by a belt of barren sand. The climate is moist, but not intemperate, although the country, like 
that of all the western snores of Scotland, is too much exposed to the continued winds and humid vapours of the Atlantic. It 
contains fertile tracts, and presents to the eye picturesque scenes; but throughout it is only of very moderate fertility, and exhibits 
a fai diffei ent aspect from those rich and verdant plains of the Severn and the Avon, of the Trent and the Cam, where the largest 
cattle in Europe can be reared, and the richest productions of the Dairy obtained. And further, the artificial improvement of the 
country is but as of yesterday, when compared with that of the fertile plains of England. Within the memory almost of the liv¬ 
ing generation, the agriculture of Ayrshire was in a state of utter rudeness. Its condition at the middle of the last century, and 
long afterwards, is thus described by eye-witnesses. There was hardly, says Colonel Fullarton, in his Survey of Ayrshire, a 
practicable road in the country. The farm-houses were mere hovels, built with clay, having a fire-place in the middle, with an 
open space for the escape of the smoke, and they were placed in a dunghill. The lands were overrun with rushes and weeds of all 
kinds. There were no fallows, no green crops, no sown grasses, no carts or waggons, no straw-yards. Hardly an esculent root was 
raised, nor indeed any garden vegetables, beyond some Scotch greens, which, with milk and oatmeal, formed the diet of the people. 
There was little straw, and no hay beyond the scanty portion collected from the bogs and wastes. The little dung produced was 
dragged to the ground on cars or sledges, or on what were called tumbler-wheels, which turned with the axle-tree, and sup¬ 
ported the wretched vehicle scarcely able to draw five hundredweight. The ground was scourged with successive crops of oats 
after oats so long as it would pay the seed and labour, and afford a small surplus of oatmeal for the subsistence of the family. It 
then remained in a state of absolute sterility, and covered with thistles, until rest again enabled it to produce a scanty crop of corn. 
The lent was generally paid in kind, on the condition of what was termed half labour. The stock and implements were furnished 
mutually by the parties concerned, or on such terms as could be agreed upon, one-half of the crop going to the landlord as rent, 
and the other remaining to the tenant, to enable him to maintain his family and cultivate his farm. There being scarcely any 
enclosures, the horses and cattle were either tethered during the summer months, or intrusted to the discretion of the shepherd 
and his cur, by whom they were kept in continued agitation, being impelled, through famine, to fly from their bare leas, and com¬ 
mit continued depredation on the adjacent crops. The cattle being starved during winter, were hardly able to rise without assist¬ 
ance in spring, and were never in fit condition for the market. No tenant could command money to stock his farm, and scarce a 
landlord could raise the means to improve his estate. Such was the condition, not of Ayrshire alone, but of a great part of Scot¬ 
land, during half the reign of George III., and down to the times which men yet living can remember. Ayrshire did not sur¬ 
pass, in the conise of improvement, districts like itself, but rather lagged behind. Scarcely any thing that deserves the name of 
agricultural improvement was effected in it until after the disastrous close of the American war; most of what has been done has 
been done since the commencement of the present century, and much of it within a few years. It is under these circumstances 
that a race of cattle has been formed and perfected, which, with relation to the purposes to which it is especially destined, ranks 
with some of the most useful produced in Britain. 
Authentic records are wanting to show by what progressive steps the Dairy Breed of Ayrshire has been moulded into its 
present form.^ That it was late in arriving at the estimation in which it is now held, is sufficiently known. Mr Culley, who 
wiote his treatise on live stock before the year 1790, does not even mention the Ayrshire as one of the recognised breeds of the 
country, nor once refer to it in the subsequent editions of his work; and Colonel Fullarton, in describing the country in which 
it was found, speaks of it in a manner so general, as to show that he did not regard it as any thing remarkable. The older breed 
of the countiy seems to have been one of those varieties of coarse Oxen with horns of a medium length, which formerly occupied 
all the central mountains south of the Forth, and extended into the plains. Mr Ayton, who published a treatise on the Dairy 
G 
