Page:The Evolution of British Cattle.djvu/65

 and it is not likely they were known outside their own territory a hundred years earlier. Early in the eighteenth century there sprang up in England a demand for hornless cattle which was responded to first in Galloway, and considerably later in the north-eastern counties. The result was that breeders elected to breed from hornless cattle; and hornlessness, which had hitherto been practically confined to the country near the coast, moved farther and farther inland. By Youatt's time (1834) the horned and the hornless cattle were almost numerically equal in the interior of the north-eastern counties, while the hornless ones were still in the majority on the coast. A quarter of a century later the horns had been almost entirely removed from the inland black cattle.

Unfortunately, we have no contemporary description of the original east-coast hornless cattle; but, from Youatt's and other notes on the colours of Forfarshire and Aberdeenshire cattle, and from a description of Aberdeenshire cattle, as they appeared about 1830, written by an Aberdeenshire farmer for Messrs. Macdonald and Sinclair, their characters can be inferred.

It must be remembered that, after the middle of the eighteenth century, many large southern cattle were introduced to the north-eastern counties. At first, these were chiefly Fifeshire