Читать книгу The Taste of Britain - Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall - Страница 240

This breed was developed in the Thames valley in the late 1700s. Early specimens are described as large-boned and tawny, red or white spotted with black. Not many years later, it was made more compact, more lightly boned and faster-maturing by interbreeding with Chinese or east Asian stock. The improved Berkshire was entirely black or white.

Mrs Beeton (1861) listed Berkshires among native British stock and praises it for a fine, delicate skin and a great aptitude to fatten. The British Berkshire Society was founded in the 1880s but the fortunes of the race declined in this century when it proved too slow-maturing and fat in comparison with modern bloodlines. Since the 1970s, there has been renewed interest and numbers are slowly recovering.