OF THE SADDLE AND SIRLOIN CLUB 205 



A MAN OF A THOUSAND TALENTS 



80. "A long green coat with velvet collar and big yellow but- 

 tons, a colored handkerchief, long yellow cashmere vest, knee- 

 breeches, very wide top boots, and plain black hat," thus cata- 

 logs WM. McCoMBiE the "plain" dress of the gentleman of Ury, 

 CAPT. BARCLAY. He was acknowledgedly the greatest all around 

 sportsman of his day, active in fox hunt, prize ring, and local 

 regiment, performer with courser and coach, claimant to the 

 earldom of Airth and Monteith, apologist for Quaker and finan- 

 cier for tenant farmer, the very cornerstone of the Shorthorn 

 foundation in Aberdeenshire. Of manly scope himself, all of 

 his operations breathed of bigness. "His cattle must be up to 

 their knees in grass and his wheat-wagons with four or six horses 

 and the drag on seemed like an earthquake to the Aberdonians 

 when they rumbled down Marischal street to the harbor. Well 

 might the surveyor tremble by reason of them for the safety 

 of the Old Bridge." McCoMBiE asserts that "his horses were 

 the strongest and his fields the largest in the country. He once 

 said that he did not like a field in which the cattle could see 

 one another every day." Ury embraced some 4,000 acres, of 

 which four hundred were in highest tilth, reclaimed from the 

 stony littoral of the Grampians' Pleistocene. 



His Shorthorn operations opened in 1822, but his success was 

 grounded in the purchase of Lady Sarah in the dispersion of 

 Mason of Chilton's herd in 1829. Her son Monarch, dropped 

 soon after her arrival at Ury, was rebred to her and from this 

 union came the foundation bulls of Ury's success, the notable 

 Mahommed and Sovereign. Sold out of the herd, the former 

 bull was repurchased on the basis of his breeding successes 

 elsewhere, and remained in the herd until 1841. In 1838 the 

 first herd, with the exception of Mahommed, was dispersed to 

 tide the Captain over financial difficulties, some eighty head real- 

 izing a total of 3,000 guineas. The Lady Sarah blood was par- 



