systematic attempt to breed them pure unless by a very few owners of small herds, their extinction seems only a matter of not very many years. At the present day the Irish Maoiles are generally full-sized cattle. There are many colours among them, viz. black, red, brindled, flecked, yellow, and dun. Yellow is generally held to be the proper colour. Here again we get back to light dun, the original colour of all the other hornless breeds; and one of the breeders writes that he once owned a "steel gray Mulline." The Irish Maoiles have also some other characters common to some of the other breeds. They are usually good milkers, and are sought after on this account; many of them give very rich milk; they are often short-legged, big bodied, narrow backed, with sickle-shaped hocks that brush each other at every step.
Looking back again at these descriptions of the hornless British breeds, there can be no other conclusion than that they did not originate in separate and independent reversions or variations, but that they were all descended from the same race, which was entirely different from the others in Britain. It was hornless, of course, it was light dun in colour, and small in size; it had a long "snake" head, narrow chine and loins, a deep body, short thin legs, sickle-shaped hocks, and it gave a good yield of milk richer than usual.
The fact that the hornless breeds were located
