HERD NOTICES 163 



regarding them have been preserved. It was at Mr 

 John Gardiner's dispersion sale in 1861 that Mr 

 Dron took seriously to the idea of founding a herd. 

 He had won prizes at Crieff with his Shorthorns in 

 1860, and he thought of further developments when 

 the Kinkell sale gave him an opportunity. He then 

 acquired two heifers, a Marchioness and a Mysie. 

 There are no representatives of the Marchioness line 

 in the existing Crieifvechter herd, but from Mysie 7th, 

 the other purchase, by the Sittyton Indispensable 

 (16,295), there is a strong show of high-class females. 

 The Mysies were from a race of short-legged, deep- 

 milking cows, which had not only to rear their own 

 calves, but to keep the dairy side of the homestead 

 well supplied. Mr Dron had a good neighbour in the 

 late Mr Maxtone Graham of Cultoquhey, who gener- 

 ally bought the best of the Sittyton bull calves. 

 This accounts for the names of Cruickshank bulls 

 well down in Crieffvechter pedigrees. 



In 1893 Mr Wm. A. Dron, son of the founder, and 

 now owner of the herd, bought a fine roan heifer 

 named Pride 15th from Mr Stott, Powburn, Kincar- 

 dineshire. That heifer, which was by the Uppermill 

 Match Him (53,296), developed into a handsome cow, 

 an excellent milker and breeder, Pride 22nd, a 

 granddaughter of the Powburn heifer, won the Short- 

 horn Society's prize for best dairy cow. One or two 

 other families have been tried in the herd in course 

 of the last quarter of a century, but to all intents 

 the Prides and Mysies have had real command of 

 the situation. Mr Dron made an important addition 



