Page:The Evolution of British Cattle.djvu/69

 "silver-coloured yellow," and dun: colours which could not have arisen otherwise than by contact with light dun cattle. That being so, there can be no other conclusion than that the colour of the east-coast partners was light dun. It could also be shown, although there is no need here, that some of the characters Mr. Forbes referred to, such as small, puny, thin-fleshed, and producers of rich milk, came originally from the hornless cattle, which, upon the whole, turn out to have been wonderfully like the Suffolks.

The Sutherland Polls.—The Sutherland polled cattle are long extinct, and it is only from an almost casual remark of Pennant's that we know they ever existed. "Sutherland is a country abounding in cattle, and sends out annually 2500 head, which sold about this time (lean) from £2 10s. to £3 per head. These are frequently without horns, and both they and the horses are very small." According to Youatt, the native cattle of Sutherland were very small: "much smaller than those of Caithness." Their colour is not mentioned, but a correspondent of Youatt's wrote him that the cattle in the neighbouring county, Ross, "are of all colours, but black and brindled predominate."

The Skye Polls.—We know that at one time there were polled cattle in Skye just as we know