Page:The Evolution of British Cattle.djvu/116

 Thus these three kinds of cattle, the Herefords, the Longhorns, and the Shorthorns, the first two largely of Dutch descent, the last almost entirely so, were established in England in the first half of the eighteenth century. But the territories they occupied were too small for them. The Longhorns were the first to make this discovery, and, casting envious eyes on the fertile country to the south, they sent out wave after wave of their surplus population, until by the end of the eighteenth century they and their progeny by English cattle possessed it all as far south as the Sussex downs, leaving the comparatively less fertile outside rim to such as the Herefords, the Devons and Somersets, the Sussex, the Suffolks, and the Norfolks. To the east they were balked by the Pennine Range and the Shorthorns; to the north the prospect was less encouraging, but across the I rish Channel they found a promising outlet.

Ireland was ripe for the importation of superior bovines. The seventeenth century had been a century of "plantations"—Elizabeth's, James's, and Cromwell's. Much of the land had become the property of the English and Scots. The cattle of the country were of the same race as the small black Celtic cattle of Scotland and