Be this as it may, it was the cattle of the Teeswater district in Durham that the Collings improved, and they are still called Durhams in many parts.  The work of the Collings[743] was carried on by Thomas Booth, who farmed his own estate of Killerby in Yorkshire, where he turned his attention to Shorthorns about 1790, and by 1814 he was as well known as the Collings.  He improved the Shorthorns by reducing the bone, especially the length and coarseness of the legs, the too prominent hips, and the heavy shoulder bones.  In 1819 he removed to Warlaby, and died there in 1835, having given up the Killerby estate to his son John, who with his brother Richard ably sustained their father’s reputation.  ‘Booth strains’ equally with ‘Bates strains’, the results of the work of Bates of Kirkleavington, whose cattle we have seen at the Oxford Show in 1839, and whose herd was dispersed in 1850, have been the foundation of many famous herds, and can be traced in many a pedigree animal of to-day.

The palmy days of the Shorthorns were the ‘seventies’ of the last century, when they made fabulous prices.  At the great sale at New York Mills, in 1873, eleven females of the Duchess tribe averaged L4,522 14s. 2d., and one cow sold for L8,458 6s. 8d.  In 1877 Mr. Loder bought Third Duchess of Hillhurst for 4,100 guineas; in 1876 Lord Bective gave 4,300 guineas for Fifth Duchess of Hillhurst, then 16 months old; and in 1875 the bull Duke of Connaught sold for 4,500 guineas.  It was not likely that with the advent of bad times these prices would continue, and nothing like them in the Shorthorn world has occurred since.

Herefords.[744]

Herefordshire cattle have long been famous as one of the finest breeds in the world.  Marshall, writing in 1788, does not hesitate to say, ’The Herefordshire breed of cattle, taking it all in all, may without risque be deemed the first breed of cattle in the land.’  Their origin has been accounted for in various ways.  Some say they were originally brown or reddish-brown from Normandy or Devon, others that they came from Wales, while it is recorded that Lord Scudamore in the latter half of the seventeenth century introduced red cows with white faces from Flanders.  However, they do not emerge from obscurity until about the middle of the eighteenth century, when Messrs. Tomkins, Weyman, Yeomans, Hewer, and Tully devoted their energies to establishing a county breed.  There were four varieties of Herefords, which have now practically merged into the red with white face, mane, and throat:  the mottle face, with red marks intermixed with the parts usually white; the dark greys; light greys; and the red with the white face.  The rivalry between the breeders of the white and the mottle faces almost caused the failure of the Herd-Book commenced in 1845 by Mr. Eyton.  The mottle-faced party seems to have been then the most influential, but the dark and light grey varieties also had strong adherents.  In 1857 Mr. Duckham took over the