This is a useful tidbit. How do we know it? Again, though, one wonders why other livestock, whether edible or otherwise useful, would not be tabulated, particularly as inventories always indicate (naturally) that these all had significant value. Why would the tax man be instructed to ignore them? The "silver plate" rundown called for in these assessments had far fewer actual entries than we'd expect to see for hogs, sheep, dairy cattle and oxen. John -----Original Message----- From: E Johnson <[email protected]> Black cattle were beef cattle --those raised for their meat, as opposed to dairy cattle, or working cattle (oxen).