London to John O' Groat's. 4.15 



green all the year round, yielding food for cattle seem- 

 ingly in the best conditions created for their growth and 

 perfection. The highest nobility and gentry of this 

 and other countries are giving to the living statuary of 

 these animals that science, taste and genius which the 

 most enthusiastic artists are giving to the still, but 

 speaking statuary of the canvas. The competition in 

 this cultivation of animal life is wide and eager, and 

 spreading fast over Christendom; emperors, kings, 

 princes, dukes and belted barons are on the lists. 

 Antipodean agriculturists meet in the great international 

 concours of cattle, horses, sheep and swine. Never 

 was royal blood or the inheritance of a crown threaded 

 through divergent veins to its source with more care 

 and pride than the lineage of these four-footed " prin- 

 ces" and "princesses," " dukes" and " duchesses," and 

 " knights" and " ladies" of the stable and pasture. 

 No peerage ever kept a more jealous heraldry than the 

 herd-book of this great quadruped ndblesse. The world, 

 by consent, has crowned the Shorthorn Durham as the 

 best blood that ever a horned animal carried in its veins. 

 Princely connoisseurs and amateurs, and all the dilettanti, 

 as well as practical agriculturists of Christendom, are 

 giving more thought to the perfection and perpetua- 

 tion of this blood than to that of any other name and 

 breed. Still and this distinction is crowned with 



