BEGINNINGS OF ILLINOIS CATTLE-BREEDING 163 



and good corn, without robbing the land of its 

 fertility, was to stock it with good cattle. He was, 

 therefore, our first great advocate and apostle of 

 conservation. And when he departed this life, in 

 1868, he left behind not a run-down, worn-out, 

 ready-to-be-abandoned farm that had been worked 

 as a mine and stripped of all its native treasures, 

 but the three thousand acres of blue-grass pasture 

 known as Grove Park, tenanted by well-bred animals, 

 with every acre richer than when it came into his 

 possession! 



Full details as to his earliest operations in pure- 

 bred live stock are unfortunately wanting. All we 

 know is that he was the first to bring the Short- 

 horns from the blue grass of Kentucky into central 

 Illinois, and that as fast as the early settlers were 

 able to avail themselves of the benefit of his exam- 

 ple, they profited by it. They came to him from far 

 and near, and went away convinced that he had 

 shown the way to be pursued. As fast as they were 

 able they bought the seed that was to blossom into 

 the harvest that lies today at the bottom of many 

 central Illinois fortunes. 



In the early fifties he made a journey to Ohio, 

 and brought back the noted bull Young Whittington, 

 that had been imported from England by the Sciota 



