170 FIELD AND FERN. 



fallen into the round of the Vale of Alford, the Royal 

 Northern at Aberdeen, and the Highland Society. 

 Inverness and Aberdeen (twice over) have been his 

 greatest weeks with "the Highland," as he swept almost 

 everything in his way ; and his blacks were " well on 

 the spot" on the only four occasions Windsor, Car- 

 lisle, Battersea, and Newcastle that there has been 

 an opening for them at the Royal English. He sent 

 fat beasts to the Birmingham and Smithfield Shows as 

 early as 1840, but it was not until 1859 that he and his 

 black brigade became a leading feature there. During 

 the last six years he has regularly taken the Smith- 

 field first prize for the polled Scot bullock, besides 

 the first in 1861 for the heifers. The latter not only 

 won the gold medal for him as the best female, but 

 took the cup as the best beast in the yard at Birming- 

 ham (where his bullock firsts during the same period 

 are only one below Smithfield) ; and both English 

 and Scotch papers might well unite in their protest, 

 when Mr. Faulkner's shorthorn Dolly, a year older 

 and two inches less in the girth, and by no means a 

 perfect specimen of her* kind, was preferred by the 

 Shorthorn, Devon, and Hereford judges in the con- 

 test for the Smithfield gold medal to the beautiful 

 " sable interloper." 



He laid the corner-stone of his fortunes by the 

 purchase of Queen Mother by Panmure (51) from Mr. 

 Eullerton, then of Mains of Ardovie, near Brechin, and 

 now of Mains of Ardestie, near Dundee. She was then 

 a yearling heifer, and cost but 18 at a cheap time. 



