'THE IMPROVED SHORTHORN.

Golden Bay Argus, Volume XIII, Issue 52, 26 May 1910, Page 3

'THE IMPROVED SHORTHORN.

Every student of shorthorn knows the original meaning of the term "improved" as applied to the breed by those men who, more than? a century ago, by the exercise of skill and enterprise, did so much in ! laying the foundation of its future* greatness ; but the writer is not* now thinking of those early days or of the methods used by those pioneers of progress in stamping on the Shorthorn the permanent characteristics which have rendered it by far the most popular breed in the world. Those methods may be roughly summed up in the two words in-breeding and selection, and' have been very amply recorded by many writers. Ancient history is always interesting, but it may be more profitable to study the doings of those who are '''making history " in our own days. Many years hencej the treatment of the breed in the( end of the nineteenth and the be-j ginning of the twentieth centuries will Le criticised, and one may well! wonder what will be the verdict of< these critics. One cannot that in their view the past twenty) years could be regarded by them as I anything but extremely critical! ones, witnessing as they have donel the rise and progress of a great] experiment. It may be taken fori granted that future generations Willi be formed that under the influence of! a craze for line-breeding some of the ! fnest strains of blood had become

decadent, and that when, under the shock of a general agricultural panic the bubble burst, tha owners of firstclj.ss herds were at their wits' end! to know how to proceed. Something had to be done to renovate and preserve the grand old material that had so jealousy been kept aPart,; and the time had come when, whatever the risk, new blood must bo sought. The bolder spirits gave a lead, which attracted many followers. The introduction of the Scotch blood was li'xe taking a plunge into cold water to the owners of soma of the fashionable tribes, and consented an experiment the results of which the cleverest breeder waa unable to forecast. Many were of opinion that the cross was too violent, and that while the progeny would probably gain in substance and constitution, they would lose much of that inimitable style and fine courage so much admired. There was much apparent reason for these forebodings, but some of the objectors lost sight of the fact that the Scotch Shorthorns were of pure descent and were virtually derived from the same parent stock ; the streams, though flowing in different chann:ls, came originally from the the same fountain-head, and we have now lived long enough to see something of the effects of their reunion. That those effects could approach uniformity waS not to be reasonably expected, and it will" not be denied that in some cases the off-spring do exhibit some shortness of body, "clogginrss" of form, and loss of style about the head and its carriage which the opponents of the movement predicted. To the impartial onlooker, however, there is plenty of evidence that it is largely a question of judgment in the selection of sires, and perhaps it would only be fair to add some amount of luck in viaw or the "atavism" of which we hear so much.

Th.it the best and most attractive features of the Kirklevington group need not necessarily be saeiinccd can, fortunately, be shown by plenty of instances in which the Scotch crosses have been freely used, and that such is the case may be a great relief to every true admirer of what has been sometimes called the aristocracy of the Shorthorn race. One of these instances is striking enough, and has, in fact, led the writer to make these remarks. Illustrated catalogues of sales form a new feature of those events,, and I have one before me as I write. It is that of the Berkeley Castle herd. Here we have the lineal descendants of Bates, most exclusively bred until the advent of the Scotch experiment. I have not seen the animals, but photography cannot greatly err in such particulars as form and style, and the catalogue pictures of several of the cows show great substance, combined with the beautiful heads and all the charm of the old sort.—" Scottish Farmer."