of L20 had been given for a cow of this breed.  Bradley, Professor of Botany at Cambridge, and a well-known writer on agriculture, divided the cattle of England into three sorts according to their colour:  the black, white, and red.[387] The black, commonly the smallest, was the strongest for labour, chiefly found in mountainous countries; also bred chiefly in Cheshire, Yorkshire, Lancashire, and Derbyshire, sixty years before this, and in those days Cheshire cheese came from these cattle, apparently very much like the modern Welsh breed.[388] The white were much larger, and very common in Lincolnshire at the end of the seventeenth century.  They gave more milk than the black sort but went dry sooner.  They were also found in Suffolk and Surrey.

The red cattle were the largest in England, their milk rich and nourishing, so much so that it was given specially to consumptives.  They were first bred in Somerset, where in Bradley’s time particular attention was paid to their breeding, and were evidently the ancestors of the modern Devons.  About London these cows were often fed on turnips, given them tops and all, which made their milk bitter.  They were also found in Lincolnshire and some other counties, where ’they were fed on the marshes’, and Defoe saw, in the Weald of Kent, ’large Kentish bullocks, generally all red with their horns crooked inward.’  Bradley gives the following balance sheet for a dairy of nine cows:[389]

DR. L s. d.

6 months’ grass keep at 1s. 6d. per week per head 17 11 0
6 months’ winter keep (straw, hay, turnips, and
grains) at 2s. per week per head 23 8 0
---------
L40 19 0
=========
CR.
13,140 gallons of milk 136 17 6
40 19 0
---------
Balance (profit) L95 18 6
=========

A correspondent, however, pointed out to Bradley that this yield and profit was far above the average, which was about L5 a cow, on whom Bradley retorted that it could be made, though it was exceptional.

In the eighteenth century the great trade of driving Scottish cattle to London began, Walter Scott’s grandfather being the pioneer.  The route followed diverged from the Great North Road in Yorkshire in order to avoid turnpikes, and the cattle, grazing leisurely on the strips of grass by the roadside, generally arrived at Smithfield in good condition.[390]

Defoe tells us that most of the Scottish cattle which came yearly into England were brought to the village of S. Faiths, north of Norwich, ’where the Norfolk graziers go and buy them.  These Scots runts, coming out of the cold and barren highlands, feed so eagerly on the rich pasture in these marshes that they grow very fat.  There are above 40,000 of these Scots cattle fed in this county every year.  The gentlemen of Galloway go to England with their droves of cattle and take the money themselves.’[391] It was no uncommon thing for a Galloway nobleman to send 4,000 black cattle and 4,000 sheep to England in a year, and altogether from 50,000 to 60,000 cattle were said to come to England from Galloway yearly.  Gentlemen on the Border before the Union got a very pretty living by tolls from these cattle; and the Earl of Carlisle made a good income in this way.