History
In 1623, a small shipment of North Devon cattle from north Devonshire arrived in the Plymouth Colony. Though cattle had been imported to the continent by the Spanish much earlier (descendants of which are the Texas Longhorn, Pineywoods and Florida Cracker breeds), this was the first arrival of British stock to the Americas. The Milking Devon spread along the east coast as far south as Florida, and its multi-purpose ability to provide labor, meat, and milk was valued by farmers. But beginning in the 19th century, the Shorthorn breed began to be preferred by farmers for dual-purpose cattle, and by 1900 the Milking Devon was rarely found outside New England. By the middle of the 20th century, numbers had dwindled even more significantly, and the market for triple purpose cattle had virtually disappeared. The breed reached its low point in the 1970s, with fewer than 100 head.
Today, Milking Devons are still one of the most endangered breeds of cattle in the world. But with the aid of organizations such as the American Livestock Breeds Conservancy and Slow Food USA's Ark of Taste, numbers have begun to rebound slightly. At any given time, 600 living animals are registered as purebred with the breed society.
Read more about this topic: Milking Devon
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“I am ashamed to see what a shallow village tale our so-called History is. How many times must we say Rome, and Paris, and Constantinople! What does Rome know of rat and lizard? What are Olympiads and Consulates to these neighboring systems of being? Nay, what food or experience or succor have they for the Esquimaux seal-hunter, or the Kanaka in his canoe, for the fisherman, the stevedore, the porter?”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“History, as an entirety, could only exist in the eyes of an observer outside it and outside the world. History only exists, in the final analysis, for God.”
—Albert Camus (1913–1960)
“There is a constant in the average American imagination and taste, for which the past must be preserved and celebrated in full-scale authentic copy; a philosophy of immortality as duplication. It dominates the relation with the self, with the past, not infrequently with the present, always with History and, even, with the European tradition.”
—Umberto Eco (b. 1932)