588 A HISTORY OF SHORT-HORN CATTLE. 



great variety of blood represented in it en- 

 abling Mr. Cruickshank to carry on his process 

 of concentration for many years with little 

 danger of deterioration. 



To undertake an enumeration of all the vari- 

 ous purchases made for the herd would be a 

 useless task. Sittyton was represented for a 

 long series of years at every auction sale of 

 any consequence in Great Britain, and many 

 animals from many different herds and of vari- 

 ous lines of breeding were bought. Some of 

 these gave satisfaction and some did not. We 

 need allude here only to such as left some im- 

 press on the herd. 



The first of the Violets. It was in 1837 that 

 Amos Cruickshank laid the foundation for the 

 Sittyton Herd. In that year he made a pil- 

 grimage to the South in quest of Short-horns, 

 proceeding as far as the County of Durham, 

 England. With characteristic caution he re- 

 turned to the North with but a solitary heifer 

 as the fruit of his travels. The following year 

 he again visited England and secured about a 

 dozen heifers. These are said to have been 

 bought from a Mr. George Williamson of North 

 Lincolnshire, and one of them, Moss Rose, be- 

 came the maternal ancestress of a family after- 

 ward famous at Sittyton as the Violets. In 

 1843 Moss Rose produced to a service by the 

 Ury bull Inkhorn a dark-roan heifer that was 



