Rise and Progress of Shorthorns. 321 



but with that infallible sign of constitution, a good wide scorp 

 or frontlet, a fine placid eye, a well-filled twist, and an undeni- 

 able back. His price caused breeders everywhere to prick up 

 their ears. They had already heard of Fowler refusing 1000 

 guineas for a longhorn bull and three cows, as well as for a cow 

 and her produce of eight seasons ; but never of one bull achieving 

 that sum. The spirit south of the Humber was fairly roused at 

 last, and when, eight years after, the Barmpton herd came to the 

 hammer, the representatives of four or five more counties were 

 found at the ring-side. The Rev. Thomas Harrison and Mr. 

 Edmonds of Boughton had often talked to Lord Althorp, Sir 

 Charles Knightley, and Mr. Arbuthnot, in the Pytchley Club 

 or woodlands, of the great day at Ketton, and his lordship 

 sent a commission to Barmpton for three heifers and a bull ; 

 while a Nottinghamshire and a Leicestershire man joined in the 

 highest-priced lot, " Lancaster " (621 guineas), which had some 

 five crosses of " Favourite " (252) in his veins. 



For many years previous to this sale Mr. Bates had been 

 breeding shorthorns by the Tyne side, and bringing his beasts, 

 as Sir Hugh Smythson had done before him, to periodical scale- 

 tests. Still he does not seem to have struck out any especial 

 herd-line for himself till he took up his fancy for the " Duchess " 

 tribe. Charles Colling assured him that the cow which he 

 bought in 1784 out of Stanwick Park was the best he ever had 

 or ever saw, and sold him her great-granddaughter " Duchess," 

 by " Daisy Bull " (186). She was the prelude to Mr. Bates's 

 purchase of "Duchess 1st," by "Comet" (155), the only 

 " Duchess " at the Ketton sale, and a very cheap lot at 186 

 guineas, as, independently of her produce, her new owner left it 

 on record that she gave 14 lbs. of butter (21 oz. to the lb.) per 

 week for six weeks after calving. 



"Belvedere" (1706), of the "Princess" tribe, was the bull 

 Avhich Mr. Bates selected to " bring out the ' Duchesses.' " He 

 was small and plain, and with rather rough shoulders, but as 

 soft as a mole in his touch. The Brothers Colling had a most 

 faithful disciple in the Kirklevington philosopher, as his cele- 

 brated show bull " Duke of Northumberland " (1940) was by 

 " Belvedere," dam by " Belvedere ;" and was thus bred on 

 precisely the same principle as four of their leading animals, 

 "Comet" and "The Ox," "Punch" and "Broken Horn,"— 

 rather an instructive comment on the popular timidity which 

 eschews even an approach to in-breeding. Mr. Bates led the 

 shorthorn ranks of the Royal Agricultural Society both at 

 Oxford and Cambridge, and it was his lot to breed the second 

 one thousand guinea bull, and to fashion the model of the moulds 

 in which such cows as " Second Grand Duchess," " Oxford 15th," 



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