Page:The Evolution of British Cattle.djvu/52

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EVOLUTION OF BRITISH CATTLE

and, if only a few were carried, their colours would soon have been swamped by the dominant black of the natives.

The cattle in the rest of the English part of England were brought over by the invaders from Western Germany. To prove this statement we must show that the cattle in the south were different from those in the rest of England in Anglo-Saxon times, and also, if possible, that others of their kind had been left behind them in Germany. One fact must be borne in mind, namely, that, from the final settling down of the English till the junction of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries there was very little movement of cattle or other live stock, with the exception of horses. We may therefore assume that, if a race of cattle is found occupying any particular part of the country about the end of the seventeenth or early in the eighteenth century, it had occupied that same part for nearly a thousand years.

It is unfortunate that, although much has been written of the history of British cattle since the middle of the eighteenth century, the period immediately before that is almost without a record. We must therefore, to some extent, fill in this period by reference to what came after. Since the first half of the eighteenth century there have been no more striking phenomena than the advent and progress of two great breeds,