HIST OK Y OF H EKE FOE D CATTLE 



CHAPTER II. 



FOUNDATION HEREFORD HERDS Continued 



JOHN PRICE, OF RYALL. 



It was impossible to notice the career of Ben- 

 jamin Tomkins, the younger, without making 

 some reference to his greatest supporter and 

 disciple, John Price. (j[ 17) Thanks to Mr. 

 Price's habit of carefully recording his breed- 

 ing transactions, and to the industry of his 

 friend, Mr. Welles, we know almost exactly the 

 character of the cows which he purchased from 

 Mr. Tomkins; and his subsequent method of 

 breeding is clearly narrated in the Herd Book 

 entries, which were drawn up from his cata- 

 logues and notes. Mr. Price was scrupulous in 

 his attention to pedigrees, and in his case, there 

 is no occasion for regret at the absence of de- 

 tails. 



John Price, the eminent breeder, was the 

 eldest son of Job and Elizabeth Price, who 

 occupied a farm at Earl's Croome, in Worces- 

 tershire (j[ 18), where he was born in 1776. 

 The son of an industrious farmer, John Price 

 was from an early age engaged in all the oper- 

 ations of the farm. Thus employed, he had 

 little opportunity for receiving any other than 

 a plain village school education. He was 

 taught to read, to write, and the use of fig- 

 ures. Whatever disadvantage, however, he ex- 

 perienced from the want of a more extended 

 education was amply compensated by the pos- 

 session of great natural abilities of a mind 

 powerful and original in its conceptions and 

 conclusions, and as soon as he commenced busi- 

 ness on his own account, he let slip no oppor- 

 tunity of improving his education by reading 

 and seeking the society of gentlemen of high 

 respectability. Early in life he became a fa- 

 vorite with the Earl of Coventry. These facts 

 are gleaned from an obituary notice that ap- 

 peared in the "Farmers' Magazine" in 1845. 

 Mrs. Pumfrey, Mr. Price's daughter, in a sub- 

 sequent number of the journal, wrote: "All 

 is true that you state of his humble birth; 

 not that his parents were of mean grade or 

 fortuneless; but farmers then lived and 

 brought up their sons so differently to those of 

 modern times. My father's transcendant and 



natural abilities and genius, however, sur- 

 mounted every obstacle to improvement; by 

 nature and habit he became a perfect gentle- 

 man, an ornament to any society, and this 

 without any assumed polish. Humble and 

 courteous even in his most palmy days, he was 

 a favorite with all, the kind and assisting 

 friend of many, his very faults leaning so much 

 to the side of virtue as to disarm one of blame. 

 Not only, as you say, was he an admitted, but 

 an honored guest at Croome, for even during 

 the visit of royal personages has the late Coun- 

 tess of Coventry insisted on my father being 

 of their circle. I have known the late Earl 

 of Coventry, with his brothers, to dine at my 

 father's house five days of the week; the late 

 Earl Plymouth, and many others, too numer- 

 ous to name individually, none of whom need 

 to blush in association with a man mentally 

 superior to most. His fame as a breeder and 

 judge of stock will not die for many an age; 

 in which respect I have often been told since 

 and before his death, he had no equal." 



Mr. Price ultimately succeeded his father as 

 tenant of Earl's Croome, and he early evinced 

 a fondness for the live stock of the farm. The 

 cattle he first possessed of any pretensions to 

 good breeding were procured from Mr. Walker, 

 of Burton. Mr. Welles states that with some 

 of these he was induced to try crosses with the 

 pure Gloucesters, an old breed famous for their 

 milking properties, the improved specimens 

 also making good carcasses of meat and pro- 

 ducing good steers. An uncle, Mr. Barnes, of 

 Corse Court, was in possession of an excellent 

 herd of the Gloucester breed, and Mr. Price 

 procured a few cows of him. Mr. Welles says 

 he remembers a cow bred from one of these by 

 a Hereford bull, making, when fed, an ex- 

 traordinary animal weighing upwards of 18 

 score per quarter (1,440 Ibs.). 



It was about the year 1804 that Mr. Price 

 became acquainted with the cattle of Mr. B. 

 Tomkins, from which he bought a few cows, 

 using to them bulls descended from Mr. Walk- 



