388 Saddle and Sirloin . 



found at Lynn's, as the hour for dinner and the draw 

 was at hand on Tuesday. Most of the old faces from 

 Caithness to Compton Bottom were also in the throng. 

 Mr. Bake moves about as brisk as a bee ; and a little 

 dark man, with a tall Scottish " shepherd king" at his 

 side, might have a printed bulletin on his breast, as 

 everybody asks him after " Bab." " The Emperor of 

 Coursers" tells us how he has just proposed the Home 

 Secretary for Renfrewshire, and then dashes off to the 

 favourites of his early days, Oscar and the rough- 

 coated Gilbertfield ; the tall and handsome owner 



Duke, and was only two years old when he followed him, in November 

 i855,toU.S.A.,foriooogs. He had not quite the bold look of Grand 

 Duke, and although it would seem to be the perfection of a Shorthorn 

 to read good nature in his face, the Americans always thought that he 

 looked too placid. Unlike the gentleman who described himself as 

 having been absolutely unable to close his eyes from emotion, the live- 

 long night after his unexpected " Vision of Fair Women," in the shape 

 of Queen Mab, Nectarine Blossom, and Queen of the May, a recent 

 visitor to Thorndale does not seem to have been the least stirred up by 

 treading such classic soil, or much struck with anything beyond Grand 

 Turk weighing 28oolbs. He tells us, however, how he found him in 

 company with Second Grand Duke and Neptune of the Booth blood; 

 and how he calculates that Duchess 64th and 66th, Oxford 5th, 6th, 

 and I3th, and Bloom, Frederica, Lalla Rookh, Buttercup 2nd, Miss 

 Butterfly, and Pearlette would be alongside them. Such an American 

 Congress would be worth all the sea-sickness and all the expense to 

 see. Duchess 64th (600 guineas), which was generally considered the 

 best of the eight Duchesses that were sold at Tortworth, died after 

 some years in America, along with Duchess 59th (350 guineas) ; and 

 Duchess 66th (700 guineas), that "brand plucked from the fire" (as 

 Earl Ducie termed her, when the news was carried to his dressing-room 

 one morning that a calf had at last been found in Duchess 55th) was 

 among the fifty head which Mr. Thome purchased after poor Mr. Becar's 

 death, for yooo/. 



In 1854 Mr. Bold en sold seven bulls at an average of 59/. &s., one of 

 them Second Duke of Cambridge, for 100 guineas. When Mr. Bolden, 

 sen., died in 1855, his herd, with some of his son's bulls, were sold at 

 Hyning, and the 28 head (including 1 1 bulls) realized an average of 

 6 1/. i6s. yd. Mr. Torr bought Gertrude (100 guineas), and Lady 

 Hopetoun (220 guineas), both of them Booth cows. In 1857 Mr. 

 Bolden sold 14, at an average of 65/. 3^. 4^., at Mr. Stafford's farm at 

 Dudding Hill. This was followed in 1860 by a sale at Springfield, 

 where 29 head averaged 87/. 17^. 6d. Of these a score were Waterloos, 



