But, if John Percy's white-headed heifer was descended from imported cattle, the importations must either have been very few, or in poor demand, for there is no indication that the Yorkshire cattle, unless those in the parks and their tame cousins in the possession of one or two families, were otherwise than black till three centuries later. Besides, it was in Lincolnshire, to which Dutchmen came to drain the fens, that the Dutch cattle are first reported to have gained a footing. In 1683 Gervaise Markham writes[1]: "As touching the right Breed of Kine through our Nation, it generally affordeth very good ones, yet some Countries do far exceed other Countries, as Cheshire, Lancashire, Yorkshire, and Derbyshire, for black Kine; Gloucestershire, Somersetshire, and some part of Wiltshire for red Kine; and Lincolnshire for pide Kine."
Thirty-three years later Mortimer[2] tells us where these Lincolnshire cattle had come from, and also that cattle of the same kind had been imported to Kent: "But the best sort of Cows for the Pail, only that they are tender and need very good keeping, are the long-legg'd, shorthorn'd Cow of the Dutch-breed, which is to be had in some places of Lincolnshire, but most used in Kent."
Still another forty years later, Hale[3] refers to
- ↑ "The English House-Wife."
- ↑ "The Whole Art of Husbandry," 1716, p. 227.
- ↑ "Compleat Body of Husbandry," vol. iii. p. 35.
