336 



Saddle and Sirloin. 



back to 1843, two or three years after his father died. 

 His first essay was hardly to his mind, and he got rid 

 of everything, and started afresh from Mr. Henry 

 Watson's sale. " Which do you come for f" said the 

 late Earl Ducie, when they encountered each other 

 going the rounds on the Walkeringham sale morning. 



bull was, quite up to half that sum, and Mr. Waldo stalled him off. 

 Then Royal Butterfly marched into the ring, with the white rosette on 

 his head, preceded by the bandmaster and two musicians of the Fifth 

 Royal Lancashire Militia, who had volunteered their services for the 

 day. With all due respect to that gallant corps, we do not think that 

 melody is its forte, and the duet they performed on cornets in honour of 

 that bull made our very blood run cold. He has known many proud 

 days in a ring, where, "after the first five minutes, he made every- 

 thing, save Dickinson's Prince of Prussia, and the mighty Soubadar 

 shrink into nothing by his side;" but it was "the proudest of them a','' 

 when five of his stock averaged 449/. 8j. The world may wax old, 

 and no man ever be able to say what Colonel Towneley can, that at 

 one and the self same time he had a Royal Butterfly with all his four- 

 year-old bloom in the paddock, and a Kettledrum at the post. 

 The real "champion of England" stood a few minutes while Mr. 

 Strafford declared that a five-guinea bid over 1200 guineas would be 

 taken ; but although many a man thought that he ought to fill a 

 five-and-twenty or thirty guinea subscription list, after such calves as 

 they had seen that day, there was only a respectful silence. " That's a 

 choker ; take him away !" The musicians assailed him in his retreat 

 with " The girl I left behind me " and after that stroke of genius they 

 collapsed. 



Royal Butterfly's Duchess had mellowed into a cow of remarkably 

 grand girth. When a calf she struck us as the living fac simile of her 

 father, on a scale for inches ; and her huggins and loins are so beauti- 

 fully covered that Mr. Strafford might well say" She'll be one of the 

 pictures in my book." " Ninety," said Captain Oliver, but he stopped 

 at 1 80 ; and as Mr. Betts's and Colonel Pennant's agents fought it out 

 by tens and twenties to 500, the face of Culshaw, which had worn a 

 most blighted expression up to this point despite Mr. Strafford's 

 assurance that " the young uns will set you all going" quite lighted up 

 at last. Nothing walked more proudly round the ring than Frederick's 

 Farewell, with her grand depth of rib and well-filled fore-quarter, of 

 which she gave such promise, as, at loh. 17 min. p.m., on that Octo- 

 ber night when Culshaw "lent his soft, obstetric hand," and "The 

 Druid," watch in hand, at last saw this rich roan heroine of nine firsts 

 ' blowing her nose in the straw." There was a bottle of wine uncorked 

 forthwith in her honour, even without the aid of the "judicious bottle- 

 holder." 



Every ring motion of Culshaw's was very keenly scanned, and he 



