They are rather rough about the head, with | portion to its quantity. They are more varied large ears. Their bodies are long and legs short, hip-bones high, and generally deficient in the points of the finer breeds. Still many of the cows fatten well, and produce beef of superior quality. In proportion to their size, the Suffolk dun cows yield a great abundance of milk; and as a dairy stock, there are very few breeds that are preferable. Irish Cattle. Of the Irish cattle there are two breeds, the middle and the long-horns. The middle-horns are the original breed, and tenant the forests and most mountainous districts. "They are," says Mr. Youatt, "small, light, active, and wild; the head commonly small; the horns short but fine, rather upright, and frequently, after projecting forward, turning backward; somewhat deficient in hindquarters; high-boned, and wide over the hips, yet the bone not commonly heavy; the hair coarse and long, black or brindled, with white faces. Some are finer in the bone and in the neck, with a good eye and sharp muzzle, and great activity; are hardy, live upon very scanty fare, and fatten with great rapidity when removed to a better soil: they are good milkers. The Kerry cows are excellent in this respect. These last, however, are wild and remarkable leapers. They live, however, upon very little food, and have often been denominated the poor man's cow." The other breed is of a larger size. It has much of the blood of the old Lancashire or Craven breed, or true long-horn. Their horns first turn outwards, then curve, and turn inwards. Of each of these kinds, an immense number of both lean and fat stock are annually exported to England; in 1825 it amounted to 63,524. The long-horns. The long-horns of England came originally from Craven in Yorkshire, and derived their name from a length of horn, which often extended to an unbecoming degree. Bakewell, Culley, and other great breeders improved upon, and have long since destroyed, the chief traces of the old, long-bodied, coarse, large boned breed. It is needless, therefore, to follow this breed through the various counties in which it once predominated, for it has long been rapidly disappearing, and has almost everywhere given place to better kinds. The improved breed of Leicestershire, is said to have been formed by Webster of Cauley, near Coventry, in Warwickshire. Bakewell, of Dishley, in Leicestershire, afterwards got the lead as a breeder, by selecting from Cauley's stock; and the stocks of several other eminent breeders have been traced to the same source. The Lancashire breed of long-horned cattle may be distinguished from other cattle by the thickness and firm texture of their hides, the length and closeness of their hair, the large size of their hoofs, and their coarse, leathery, thick necks. They are likewise deeper in their fore quarters, and lighter in their hind quarters than most other breeds; narrower in their shape, less in point of weight than the shorthorns, though better weighers in proportion to their size; and though they give considerably ess milk, it is said to yield more cream in pro in colour than any other breeds; but, whatever the colour may be, they have in general a white streak along their back, which the breeders term finched, and mostly a white spot on the inside of the hough. (Culley, p. 53.) “In a ge. neral view," says Loudon, "this race, notwithstanding the singular efforts that have been made towards its improvement, remains with little alteration; for, except in Leicestershire, none of the subvarieties (which differ a little in almost every one of those counties where the long-horns prevail) have undergone any radical change or any obvious improvement." (Loudon's Encyc. of Agr. p. 1015.) The short-horns.-Of this noble breed of cattle, which seems to be annually increasing in fa vour with the dairyman and the grazier, we are mainly indebted to the description of the late Rev. Henry Berry. Durham and Yorkshire have for ages been celebrated for a breed of these possessing extraordinary value as milkers, "in which quality," says Mr. Youatt, "taken as a breed, they have never been equalled. The cattle so distinguished were always, as now, very different from the improved race. They were generally of large size, thin skinned, sleek haired, bad handlers, rather delicate in constitution, coarse in the offal, and strikingly defective in the substance of girth in the fore-quarters. As milkers they were most excellent, but when put to fatten, as the foregoing description will indicate, were found slow feeders, producing an inferior quality of meat, not marbled or mixed as to fat and lean; the latter sometimes of a very dark hue. Such, too, are the unimproved short-horns of the present day." About the year 1750, in the valley of the Tees, commenced that spirit of improvement in the breeders of the old short-horns, which has ended in the improved modern breed. These efforts, begun by Sir William Quintin, and carried on by Mr. Milbank of Barmingham, were nearly completed by Mr. Charles Colling. The success of this gentleman was, from the first, considerable. He produced, by judicious selections and crossings, the celebrated bull Hubback, from whom are descended the best short-horns of our day. Of this breed was the celebrated Durham ox, which was long shown in a travelling van at country fairs, and which, when slaughtered in April, 1807, at eleven years of age, weighed 187 stone; and the Spottiswoode ox, probably the largest ever exhibited. In June, 1802, he measured-height of shoulder, 6 feet 10 inches; girth behind the shoulder, 10 feet 2 inches; breadth across the hooks, 3 feet 1 inch; computed weight, 320 stones of 14 lbs. (Quart. Journ. of Agr. vol. vi. p. 271.) Besides Mr. Colling, his brother Mr. Robert Colling, Mr. Charge, and Mr. Mason were hardly second to him in skill and success as breeders of the short-horns. With the pure improved short-horns, crossed with a red polled Galloway cow, was produced a variety of this breed, which was long named "the alloy," but for which at Mr. C. Collings' sale, October 11, 1810, some most extraordinary prices were obtained: thus a cow called present the breeds variously termed, Dutch, Holderness, Teeswater, Yorkshire, Durham, Northumberland, &c. The Teeswater breed, a variety of short-horns established on the banks of the Tees, at the head of the vale of York, is at present in the highest estimation, and is alleged to be the true Yorkshire shorthorned breed. Bulls and cows from this stock, purchased at most extraordinary prices, are spread over all the north of England and the border counties of Scotland. The bone, head, and neck of these cattle are fine; the hide is very thin; the chine full; the line broad; the carcass throughout large and well fashioned; and the flesh and fattening quality equal, or perhaps superior, to those of any other large breed. The short-horns give a greater quantity of milk than any other cattle; a cow usually yielded 24 quarts of milk per day, making 3 firkins of butter during the grass season. (Culley, p. 48.) The Yorkshire cow.-With Mr. Youatt's account of the Yorkshire cow (and this article is, in fact, hardly any thing else but an abridgment of his excellent work "On Cattle" in the Library of Useful Knowledge) we shall conclude. The Yorkshire cow is that generally found in the great dairies in the vicinity of London, and in these the character of the Holderness and the Durham unite. "A milch cow good for the pail as long as she is wanted, and then quickly got into marketable condition, should have a long and rather small head; a large-headed cow will seldom fatten or yield much milk. The eye should be bright, yet with a peculiar placidness and quietness of expression; the chaps thin, and the horns small. The neck may be thin towards the head; but it must soon begin to thicken, and especially when it approaches the shoulder. The dewlap should The colours of the improved short-horns are red or white, or a mixture of both; "no pure improved short-horns," adds Mr. Youatt, "are found of any other colour but those above named." That the matured short-horns are an admirable grazier's breed of cattle is undoubted: they are not, however, to be disregarded as milkers; but they are inferior, from their fattening qualities, to many others as workers. "In its points," says Mr. James Dickson (Quart. Journ. of Agr. vol. vi. p. 269), for quantity and well laid on beef, the short-horn ox is quite full in every valuable part; such as along the back, including the fore-ribs, the sirloin and rump, in the runners, flanks, buttocks, and twist, and in the neck and brisket as inferior parts. In regard to quality of beef, the fat bears a due and even preponderating proportion to the lean, the fibres of which are fine and well mixed, and even marbled with fat, and abundantly juicy. The fine, thin, clear bone of the legs and head, with the soft mellow touch of the skin, and the benign aspect of the eye, indicate, in a remarkable degree, the disposition to fatten; while the uniform colours of the skin, red or white, or both, commixed in various degrees, bare, cream-coloured skin on the nose and around the eyes, and fine, tapering, white, or light-coloured horns mark distinctly the purity of the blood; these points apply equally to the bull, the cow, and the heifer. The external appearance of the short-be small; the breast, if not so wide as in some horned breed," adds Mr. Dickson, "is irresist- that have an unusual disposition to fatten, yet ably attractive. The exquisitely symmetrical should be very far from being narrow, and it form of the body in every position, bedecked should project before the legs; the chine to a with a skin of the richest hues of red, and the certain degree fleshy, and even inclining to richest white approaching to cream, or both fulness; the girth behind the shoulder should colours, so arranged or commixed as to form a be deeper than is usually found in the shortbeautiful fleck or delicate roan, and possessed horn; the ribs should be spread out wide, so of the mellowest touch; supported on clean as to give as globu.ar a form as possible to the small limbs, showing, like those of the race-carcass, and each should project farther than horse and the greyhound, the union of strength the preceding one, to the very loins. She with fineness; and ornamented with a small, should be well formed across the hips, and on lengthy, tapering head, neatly set on a broad, the rump, and with greater length there than firm, deep neck, and furnished with a small the milker generally possesses, or if a little too muzzle, wide nostrils, prominent, mildly beam- short not heavy. If she stands a little long on ing' eyes, thin, large biney ears set near the the legs, it must not be too long. The thighs crown of the head and protected in front with somewhat thin, with a slight tendency to crooksemicircularly bent, white, or brownish co-edness or being sickle-hammed behind; the loured, short (hence the name), smooth pointed horns; all these parts combine to form a symmetrical harmony, which has never been surpassed in beauty and sweetness by any other species of the domesticated ox." tail thick at the upper part, but tapering below; and she should have a mellow hide, and but little coarse hair. Common consent has given to her large milk-veins. A large milk-tein certainly indicates a strongly developed vasAn excellent paper by Mr. Dickson on cross-cular system, one favourable to secretion geneing the short-horns with other cattle, may be consulted with advantage by the breeder in the Edin. Quart. Journ. of Agr. vol. vii. p. 495, and on crossing in general, Ibid. p. 247. In the first plate a representation is given of short-horned cows; in Plate 12, fig. 1, is a drawing of a short-horned bull, which may re rally, and to that of the milk amongst the rest. The udder should rather incline to be large in proportion to the size of the animal, but not too large; its skin thin and free from lumps in every part of it; the teats of a moderate size. The quantity of milk given by some of these cows is very great; it is by no means uncom |