Page:The Evolution of British Cattle.djvu/92

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EVOLUTION OF BRITISH CATTLE

their progress farther westward is unusually scanty. Indeed, were it not that the cattle themselves carried evidence of their origin wherever they went, their westward march in England might still remain not proven. But, early in the eighteenth century, characters appear among the cattle in some of the midland counties and in the west and north-west which were previously unknown in those parts of England, but were well known in Holland and Flanders. These are increase in size and the markings which are still peculiar to the Herefords and the Longhorns. These two breeds and the Shorthorns were almost the only large cattle in Britain till the nineteenth century was well through.

Hale tells us that, in his day, 1757, the graziers had already mixed the breeds "more or less in each country," while Culley s remark that "a very heavy strong" breed had been raised "upon the mountains which separate Yorkshire from Lancashire" by crossing the Yorkshire and Lancashire cattle is in itself evidence that the large West European cattle had reached Lancashire long before Culley's time. Still better evidence is to be found in some of the old "Agricultural Surveys," in which the authors, not knowing of the banishment of the older cattle, speak of these great cattle that were Flemish or Dutch in appearance, size, and markings as "native," "indigenous," and so on. In Pitt's