AFTERMATH 203 



of a similar effort I had made some years previous 

 to draw out another octogenerian cattleman who 

 was also more given to making history than talking 

 about it. I allude to "Uncle" ABRAM RENICK of 

 Kentucky. The first, last and only time I ever saw 

 him was at one of the VANMETER-HAMILTON sales of 

 1882 or 1883. He was then quite feeble and when 

 I asked, "Mr. RENICK, did the 4th Duke of Geneva, 

 as a matter of fact, really do your old Roses of 

 Sharon any good?" he simply said, after thinking it 

 over for a moment, "I don't know that he did, but 

 he helped to sell them." That was all I could get; 

 but there was a deep significance, as a matter of 

 fact, in those few words. And so with Mr. GRUICK- 

 SHANK. When I asked if he considered that his 

 herd in its later years had stood in need of an 

 outcross some reinvigo ration through fresh blood 

 elements he merely shook his "frosty pow" and 

 said, "It may be so, but I was too old to do it." 

 By inference he recognized the fact that some loss 

 of size and substance had set in, but the great and 

 always difficult task of seeking to revivify a strongly 

 inbred type must, in his case, be left to younger men. 

 How DUTHIE and WILLIS the one working in the 

 north of Scotland and the latter in the south of 

 England set about this undertaking, and how clev- 



