Various accounts represent that the Earl of Marchmont, some time between 1724 and 1740, introduced to his estates, in Berwickshire, some cattle, conjectured (their history was not positively known) to be of the Holderness or Teeswater breed, and that, not long afterwards, some of the stock was carried to estates belonging to the same nobleman, in that part of Ayrshire called Kyle. But, perhaps, the main nucleus of the improved breed was the "Dunlop stock," so called, which appears to have been possessed by a distinguished family by the name of Dunlop, in the Cunningham District of Ayrshire, as early as 1780. This stock, it is said, was derived, at least in part, from animals imported from Holland. The Dunlop cows soon became noted. Rawlin (as quoted by Youatt), who wrote in 1794, speaking of the cattle of Ayrshire, says, "They have another breed, called the Dunlop, which are allowed to be the best race for yielding milk in Great Britain, or Ireland, not only for large quantities, but also for richness and quality." This, though extravagant praise, perhaps, shows that the stock possessed remarkable qualities at that early day. It was, indeed, held in great esteem still earlier. In Youatt's Treatise, it is mentioned, when speaking of the cattle of Dumfrieshire, that the poet Burns, when he occupied a farm near the city of Dumfries, "not content with the Galloway breed, introduced some of the West-Country cows, which he thought would produce more milk." In the poet's published correspondence, allusion is made, in a letter dated November 13th, 1788, to a heifer which had been presented to him by the proprietor of Dunlop House, as "the finest quey in Ayrshire." Mrs. Dunlop, it will be remembered, was a special friend and correspondent of the poet.[A] Col. Le Couteur, in a paper on the Jersey or Alderney cow, published in the Journal of the Royal Agricultural Society, refers to a statement by Quayle, that the Ayrshire was a cross of the Short Horn and Alderney; and adds himself that "there is a considerable affinity between the two breeds." Rawlin also says, in reference to the Ayrshire breed, "It is said to be a mixture by bulls brought from the island of Alderney, with their own or the old race of cows." Martin says, "At some period or other there has evidently been a cross with the Durham or Holderness, and, perhaps, also with the Alderney." Professor Low, in his "Illustrations of British Quadrupeds," says, "From all the evidence which, in the absence of authentic documents, the case admits of, the dairy breed of Ayrshire cows, owes the characters which distinguish it from the older race, to a mixture of the blood of the races of the continent and of the dairy breed of Alderney."