ABERDEEN TO STONEHAVEN. 199 



breeding; and there is hardly a shorthorn breeder 

 north of the Frith of Forth who does not acknow- 

 ledge himself under some obligation to one of the 

 two. 



At his sale, which took place on Sept. 7, exactly two 

 months after the Stonehaven dinner,, Hugh Watson 

 of Keillor bought the first lot, or the " No. 20, Lady 

 Sarah, 150 gs." of Mason's sale. She was thirteen 

 years old, and her price sunk to 40 gs., but her grand- 

 daughter Lily went for 130 gs. to Mr. Allan Pollok, 

 and seven of her tribe averaged 78 gs. This sale was 

 a good one, and of course he took to " shorthorns not 

 shorthorned" again, and kept them till a year or so- 

 before his death, when he gave them up, and merely 

 fed some cross-bred beasts. He lacked taste in 

 cattle, and was only an ordinary judge of a beast or 

 sheep ; but he had heaps of good sense, and docility 

 to boot, and generally took his cue like a man from 

 masters in the science. In Scotland, Hugh Watson 

 and Deacon Williamson were very trusty counsellors 

 in stock matters, and Wetherell and Jonas Webb 

 stood high with him over the Border. He was not 

 a ram breeder, and when he rather tired of Leices- 

 ters he took to Cotswolds, and began to breed in- 

 and-in too much. Cheviots he did not care for, and 

 he had a small flock of Southdowns which he crossed 

 with the Leicester, and occasionally with the black- 

 faced, and sold the lambs in summer. 



When he walked his thousand miles in a thousand 

 hours' match in 1809, his man Cross went at him 



