u 



THE FARMER'S MAGAZINE. 



nished a characteristic opening group, when, after a 

 five miles' ride from the Gilling station, past a long 

 woodland chain, sacred to " hard riding Ben," and the old 

 Middleton blood, we at last reached Brandsby. The 

 mist was perverse again, but with a little ocular perse- 

 verance, we made out that there was a ruined castle in 

 the distance ; and (by the aid of a gazetteer and an 

 atlas), that we were at that moment, not only in " the 

 wapentake of Bulmer and the union of Easingwold," 

 but, better still, in " part of the bishoprick of Craike." 

 Be that bishop a man or a myth, the long low-pitched 

 house — with the dark green Cotoniastus creeping over 

 it, and peeping with its red flowrets in at every 

 lattice — which furnished us with a resting-place in his 

 diocese, is quite the realization of a snug Yorkshire home. 

 The freshly-christened Promised Land, first at Picker- 

 ing, and second at Aberdeen, Landseer, Young Painter 

 (a son of the sheep in Mr. Wiley's picture), Y'oung Fat- 

 back, and divers others, were nibbling close up to the 

 garden wicket ; and one of Chester Symmetry'sdaughters 

 was roving along the hedge side, and seasoning her ba- 

 con, by anticipation, with a dainty meal beneath the 

 "cock-pits," which have been specially chosen from 

 among apple trees, on account of their peculiarly thin 

 and open wood, to engraft upon crab stocks in the neat 

 hedgerows of the farm. 



Mr. Wiley's holding consists of about seven hundred 

 acres, and seem to take in three sides of a square. The 

 ewes are kept principally on seeds, at his Warren House 

 Farm, which is higher and lighter land, near the 

 Wiganthorpe moors, while the tups are brought down 

 during the summer to the Brandsby pastures. Sixty 

 acres of the latter is glebe, and the remainder, a great 

 portion of which is park, belongs to the Cholmeley 

 family at the Hall. 



Long and steady success as a breeder of shorthorns, 

 Leicesters, and pigs, has not one whit weakened the be- 

 lief in Mr. Wiley's mind, that the plough is the first 

 great creditor of a nation, and he has followed rigidly in 

 the track of his father, who began with thorns and stones, 

 when the centuiy was young, and then became one of 

 the pioneers of hollow draining in Yorkshire. With 

 his Shorthorns, which number about forty head, he 

 has adopted the safe old rule of never refusing a likely 

 offer when he could get it ; and hence, except when he 

 had something very much out of the common, he has 

 never held for the mere chances of the Show-yard. 



The blood of Comet was at fever-heat in the market* 

 when he hired his first bull in 1814, and Mr. Wright, 

 of Cleasby (one of the joint purchasers of the thousand- 

 guinea wonder) found a youthful Lubin (388) exactly 

 to suit him. Adonis, another son of Comet, from 

 Beauty, and bred by Charles Colling, did him such 

 good service, the two next seasons, that he followed him 

 up with his own brother, Jupiter (343), and the suc- 

 cession was kept alive by North Star (459), and Harold 

 (291), which were sent home when Robert had his sale 

 in '18. Two years before that, Mr. Wiley had bought 

 Mida from the Rev. Thomas Vaughan, of Houghton, 

 near Darlington, and the strain pleased him so much, 

 that he bore off her sire Midas (435) in his tenth year^ 

 in the Barmpton ring, after atough rally with Sir William 

 Cooke, for 270 gs., and a yearling heifer from Trinket as 

 well. The money, which was laid out on this tribe, has 

 never been a source of regret, as Grazier (1085), by Mi- 

 das, more than brought it back. Old Anna's, of Helms- 

 ley, is not the only tongue which has waxed eloquent in 

 the ancient red's behalf. Sir John Johnstone, of Hack- 

 ness, used him for three seasons, and when the late Lord 

 Feversham, Mr. Smith, of West Razen, Mr. Slater, of 

 North Carlton, and Mr. Wiley himself had all dipped 

 pretty deeply into him, he ended his days at fourteen, at 



Byram Hall. Gunthorpe, of the Castle Howard herd, 

 which also used him, was one of his principal sons, and 

 he was in his turn the sire of Malibran, for whom her 

 breeder, Mr. Henry Edwards, got 300 gs. Mr. Whita- 

 ker of Greenholme's blood was also introduced at 

 Brandsby, both through His Highness (2125), own bro- 

 ther to the 210-guinea Highflyer of the Chilton sale, 

 and Abernethy (1602); and Sultan (1485), for whose 

 ancestor Mary, General Simson gave 300 gs. to Charles 

 Colling, was purchased from Mr. William Jobson, after 

 he had been extensively engaged in Northumberland, in 

 circulating what the borderers still fondly style " the good 

 old Jobson sort." The principal result of the one year's 

 service which he had out of him, was Sultana ; and from 

 her union with Belshazzar (1704), whom he hired from 

 Castle Howard, there came a bull calf, which had good 

 looks enough to be honoured at once with Mr. Wiley's 

 favourite cognomen of Carcase. 



Belshazzar, who got his stock very large and good- 

 looking, was the sire of Victoria, which was sold from the 

 Brandsby herd, for 160 gs., but Carcase (3285) was his 

 greatest hit. The latter won the yearling bull prize in 

 1838, both at Thirsk and at York, where he divided the 

 winner Hecatomb and the great two. year-old Duke of 

 Northumberland in the classes for all ages ; but still 

 Mr. Bates was e nabled to say that his crack was never 

 beaten by a bull of his own age. A two-guinea sweepstake, 

 rather a common practice of the time, at the same show, 

 helped to swell Carcase's winnings to ^'65 ; and he was 

 eventually sent to America for 200 gs., whither Miss 

 Hudson, by Hermes (8145), and her calf. Miss Wiley, 

 by Prince Royal (who was bought at the Hart Warren 

 sale), followed him in 1853. Miss Hudson was from 

 Mayoress, by Carcase, and her half-sister Lady Chandos, 

 by Booth's Buckingham (3239), who came to Mr. 

 Wiley's as a yearling, ended her career by winning the 

 ^20 prize in her class, and the gold and silver medals at 

 Smithfield in 1849. Mr. Mason Hopper's Cherryble 

 (5856) followed " The Comet of Warlabtj," and then 

 Vandyke (7669), who went directly back through Violet 

 and Julia, to Lady Sarah, the highest-priced lot at the 

 Chilton sale, was purchased from Mr, Pollock, of Moun- 

 tainstown, Navan. Hisson VanDunck (10992) was a se- 

 cond Carcase in the show-yard. He not only took the 

 first £25 prize at the Yorkshire Society's Meeting at 

 Thirsk, as the best bull of any age, but carried ofl"the 

 prize for the best two-year-old bull at the Highland So- 

 ciety ; and after being placed second to Mr. Anthony 

 Maynard's Crusade, in the Sweepstakes, passed for 

 125 gs. into the hands of Mr. Whitehead, of Little 

 Methlie, near Aberdeen. He was from Eliza, by Rumour 

 (7456), a son of Buckingham's, who was used for seve- 

 ral seasons in the herd, and then let for a time to the 

 late Mr. Bolden, of Hyning. John Bull (11618), from 

 Mayoress, was his principal son, and departed after a 

 long period of service at home, to Mr. Cruikshanks, of 

 Sittyton, last year. Zetland (14409), by the Third 

 Duke of York (10166), from Lord Spencer's Figurante, 

 brought some Bates blood into the herd from Aske, and 

 Fawsleyalso contributed its quota in Grey Friar (9172), 

 whose decease and salt water embalment after he crossed 

 ths H umber, is told in the annals of Aylesby. 



And now from these Shorthorn data which we duly- 

 chronicled, with the Herd Books, prize lists, sale cata- 

 logues, and not a few medal cases, on the table, 

 and half-a-dozen bulls, tups, and sows, looking calmly 

 down on us from the walls, we slipped from the past 

 into the present, and sallied out for a stroll. The 

 orchard, of which the Hull pen of winners had taken 

 bodily possession, was the first point of attraction, and 

 Symmetry, the dam of the four young Usefuls, which 

 took the first prize at Chester and NorthalUrton 

 the previous year, was turned out of her stye for ub, 



