of back, velvety of coat, placid of disposition.
Gentle ladies scientifically apply their pink fingers
to handling this Duchess, for whom five
hundred guineas have been given, and that Royal
Prince, for whom twelve hundred guineas have
been refused.

Fashion has had its day, and has its day with,
this wonderful triumph of the art of breeding.
To keep up a first-rate herd of prize-winning
Short-horns is one of the contributions which
may be wisely used for acquiring that pleasant
but undefinable position which newly-estated
men desire to win—like hunting the county
fox-hounds at your own expense, building a
church, standing for a contested election on
Conservative principles, keeping up pheasant
covers for the use of your squirearchal neighbours,
or laying in and judiciously uncorking the
finest possible port wine. But although the
fashion remains, solid profitable utility has long
outbalanced fashion, and at this day plain farmers
most successfully cultivate the Short-horn breed
which plain farmers founded and great noblemen
preserved and handed down through the
dark days of a reaction, the result of extravagant
speculation and national distress.

But here the uninitiated may fairly ask, what is
a Short-horn? A Short-horn is one of the largest
species of the ox tribe, not in height and bone, but
in solid meat and fat, in breadth and depth of the
joints that roast or boil. The Short-horn is
remarkable to the most careless observer for vast
breadth of back, " like a dining-table," a light
elegant thorough-bred-looking head, soft velvety
hair, and mellow flesh, huge carcase, short clean
legs. The Short-horn may be red or white, or
both—the most favourite colour being a rich
roan—any spot of black is an. unpardonable
blemish, a sign of mésalliance, fatal to hopes
of prizes, however otherwise excellent. The
question whether the Short-horn is a breed or a
compound, has been hotly disputed for nearly half
a century, and still remains unsettled; but, next
to race-horses, of all breeding stock it is that
which most depends on pedigree, the highest-priced
animals having almost invariably a genealogical
tree going back a hundred years, and
distinctly recorded in the Burke of the race—
Strafford's Herd-book; a book which runs from
dams and sires backwards until it ends in the
dark night that preceded the founders of the
race—those plain, shrewd, and now famous
graziers, the brothers Collings.

The breeders of other breeds, the Herefords
and Devons—than either of which there is no
better beef—are happy if they can now and then
get a hundred pounds for a bull, and half the
sum for a heifer in her prime. But for Short-
horn bulls of the finest symmetry and purest
pedigree, a thousand pounds has been again and
again given at public auction. Not many years
ago twelve hundred and fifty pounds was paid
for Master Butterfly to export to Australia.

Since that time the same sum has been
refused for males of the same breed. Cows and
heifers frequently command from two hundred
and fifty to eight hundred guineas, and calves
barely ready to walk and feed alone have brought
a hundred guineas. Whence this extraordinary
value? Is it for the dairy or the butcher? As
to the dairy, there are cows by no means faultless
in form—and as to pedigree, as Horace
Walpole had it, by " nobody's son and anybody's
daughter''—- that fill the pail, and delight the
dairymaid; and as to beef, the smaller, more
aboriginal, and less pedigreed, Scots, Welsh, and
Devons, will fetch a penny to twopence a pound
more than the finest Short-horn. Is it fashion,
then, that makes these animals so costly and so
popular? No! Fashion has had its day. The
Short-horn, few in number, and in the hands of
two or three breeders fifty years ago, were once
a rage, a mania, and brought prices that have
only of late years been equalled and exceeded.
Then followed what is called, in Short-horn
language, " the dark days" of the race: it shared in
the universal depression of agriculture during
the transition from war to peace, and from paper
to gold money. Then came a revival, and the
demand for pedigree Short-horns has for twenty
years been steadily growing under the influence
of their general utility. As to meat, what it
wants in quality—and Yorkshire beef is not to
be despised—it makes up in quantity: it is the
true founder of " beef for the million." As to
milk, although the tribes vary in pail-filling
qualities—and we do hear of heifers whose milk-
making qualities have been so sacrificed to fat
that they cannot rear their own calves—still for
quantity there is no breed that exceeds the best
dairy tribes of the Short-horn. In London universally,
and in most other dairy countries that
do not boast a special county breed, Devons
or Suffolks, the Short-horn cross is the favourite
blood,making first-rate butter and cheese. Stilton,
and Cheshire, and Cheddar, all may be made in
Short-horn dairies, and then, when fails the pail,
the cow, on little food and at short notice, lays
on plenty of marketable beef. Then again, wherever
agriculture thrives, and roots are plentifully
grown, the cross of Short-horn blood is sure to
produce a profitable butcher's beast; so much
so, that, in all the level corn countries, year
by year the Short-horn character crosses out
divers inferior county breeds. Again, the Short-horn
thrives in all climates, although not on all
soils. In the Irish breeding and grazing countries
it has so thriven and spread, that it has not only
superseded to a great degree the original picturesque
long-horned, heavy-hided Irish breed—-
a breed which took five or six years instead of
two or three to fatten (although when fattened
a favourite with both the butcher and the tanner)
but has become a regular article of export.
The English store markets, as far north as
York, are regularly supplied with Irish yearling
and two-year-old Short-horns, which English
graziers fatten and finish on grass and hay, corn,
cake, and meal. In France the Short-horn has
been for years established, and by crossings made
as much improvement in the native races as the
minute division of land will permit. There is
no better account of these famous cattle than
that contained in a volume published at the