Back-seat antics

THE article on saving the Gloucester cow (September 21) reminded me of a visit to Wick Court in Gloucestershire, where Alex and Ella Dowdeswell told me that the breed had reached a critical point in its survival during the Second World War due to inbreeding. Petrol was short, but, once a year, Earl Bathurst would put a bull calf in the back of his car and take it over to the Dowdeswells, returning with a different calf from their herd. The sisters believed that, if this exchange hadn’t taken place, the Gloucester cow would have died out. Ian Hunter Darling, Gloucestershire