THE FARMER'S MAGAZINE. 



437 



THE HERDS OF GREAT BRITAIN. 



Chap. XXVI. 

 MESSRS. QUARTLY AND DAVY'S. 



A busy fair and sale week in Devon was wearing to a 

 close, when we mounted a friend's hack, and set out for 

 a quiet day at MoUand and Flitton. These northern 

 strongholds of the cattle land of Edom lie fully seven 

 miles apart, and hence we had to be in the saddle be- 

 times. Our ride over the same road to the great Champson 

 carnival of the day before was quite lively by comparison. 

 We now met only six living beings in nearly as many 

 miles of lane. The footfalls of the sturdy Devonians, who 

 had trudged along, with their gaiters on their legs and 

 their staff in their hands, like pious pilgrims journeying 

 towards a shrine, had long since become mere echoes of 

 the night. The air bit shrewdly, the cold wet shook 

 itself relentlessly from the boughs, which were fast 

 fading off into their Martinmas brown, and we felt our 

 note-book, under the circumstances, to be quite a na- 

 tural enemy. A few memoranda from Dr. Arthur 

 Bury, who penned them about 170G, were all the capital 

 we had in it, whereon to build a chapter that day. They 

 told how the Cornish and Devon men got free of the 

 Norman forest laws by liberal payments of marks and 

 white palfreys ; and how in later years they were wont 

 to go as far as they could into the sea at low ebb, and 

 carry the sand in bags to mix with lime, ten miles on 

 horseback, into the interior. So blest, according to the 

 Doctor, was " the marriage of these male and female 

 salts, the one lusty and active, and the other more bal- 

 samic and gentler," that to say nothing of '•' theincrense 

 of come and tillage within the counties," the fields 

 " produced pasture short and sweet, and growing all the 

 winter, so that their sheep k.iow not hay nor water." 

 But it was with the brothers James and John Quartly 

 of the present, and not with the pig- tailed pundits of 

 the past, that we had to deal that day ] and the Doctor 

 and his salts were forgotten, as we left the road and 

 cantered up the oak and ashen avenue of the West 

 MoUand woods. The red deer, one of which gave the 

 late Earl Portsmouth's hounds a fruitless twenty miles 

 without a check, has almost fled from his lair by the side 

 of the Barton Water, but the challenge of the Eggesford 

 to the " red rogue," and the horn of the present Earl 

 are heard amid its copse and dells. 



The last Courtenay quitted the threshold of Molland 

 House more than a century ago, in favour of the 

 Throckmortons ; but the name of " Hughe Courtenay, 

 sometime Earle of Devon," still lingers beneath the 

 Swan and Boar coat-of-arms, which holds its own over 

 the portals. Only a portion of the grey old grange 

 remains. The room in which we sat was once the chapel, 

 and the "Vita-fugit" motto on the faded yellow-letter 



sun-dial, which clung to the thickly-ivied gable, was 

 never more trite and true in its lesson. 



Mr. James Quartly 's holding consists of about 700 

 acres, he best of it, though not very strong feeding 

 land, on blue slate and shillit, and the remainder on 

 blue-stone brash. Four hundred acres of it were once 

 a rough sheep-walk, covered with heather ; but about a 

 fourth of it has been broken up, and sown with turnips 

 or laid down to grass ; and the flock have done full 

 justice to the outlay. Tiie turnips, which like his neigh- 

 bours' were fearfully bad this year, are swedes and 

 golden yellows ; and the mangels, of which not many 

 are grown, long yellows and yellow globes. The corn- 

 growing is on a most primitive scale, simply for con- 

 sumption in the house and on the farm, and scarcely a 

 hundred bushels of wheat are sold yearly out of Mol- 

 land parish. To breed Devons, pure and simple, is 

 the sole charter of the farm, and Brocklesby has not 

 been more true to Will Smith's dying words, to 

 " stick to the old Ranter sort," than James and John 

 Quartly have been to the rich legacy of breeding 

 models, which their uncle Frank and their father handed 

 down to them in the Pretty Maid, Tulip, Picture, and 

 Curly families. They had no names in those great days, 

 but still Devon breeders were a herd-book to them- 

 selves, and had attained quite a masonic accuracy in their 

 oral lore, before Captain Davy stepped forth, and fixed 

 1820 as "the year of memory." Sillivant (120), who was 

 sold as a yearling for 97 gs. at one of Mr. Frank Quartly's 

 sales in 1836, was the most important of Mr. James 

 Quartly's earliest purchases, and in due time Mr. 

 Childe of Kinlet secured him for Shropshire. Prize 

 (108) had been purchased by Mr. Childe's father some 

 years before, and his " trade-mark " was so distinct, 

 that when James accompanied a friend to the Smith- 

 field Show for the fiirst time, in 1838, when breeds 

 were not kept distinct, and found a little ox cut off by 

 the Shorthorns in a corner, but still with the gold- 

 medal card over his head, he " claimed him at once for 

 a Prize," and had his claim allowed as soon as his owner, 

 Mr. Clarke Hillyard (who had off'ered in the previous 

 August to show him against any ox in England), could 

 be cross-questioned on the point. Pretty Maid (366), 

 who was in her bloom about twenty years ago ; Tulip 

 (451), the dam of Forester (46) ; and Curly (92), the 

 dam of Hundred Guinea (56), still live on canvas at 

 Molland House, and so do Pretty Maid (366), a 

 daughter of Curly, and Rosebud (the dam of Napoleon), 

 " the grandest cow ever seen at Molland," and a winner 

 not only as a heifer in-calf at the Lewes Royal, but of 

 the first prize and silver medal both at Birmingham and 

 Smitbfield in the winter of '59. There, too, are the 

 brace of steers, both of them by Earl of Exeter (38), 



K K 



