THE COLLING BROTHERS. 33 



however, and may give them at a proper time as different subjects of 

 discussion may arise, but knowing that different opinions may be as 

 honestly held, and as freely discussed as our own, we do not choose 

 to bias the judgment of others, or rule their conclusions. We aim to 

 write history, and nothing else, in what relates to Short-horn progress 

 and improvement. 



Robert Colling, the elder brother, settled on a farm at Barmpton, 

 and Charles, the younger, on another farm at Ketton, which latter 

 one had been for many previous years occupied by their father, within 

 a short distance of the Tees, and but a short way apart from each 

 other, in the neighborhood of Darlington. Practical farming among 

 the higher classes of nobility had become respectable. His Majesty, 

 the third George, the first of the Guelph dynasty born in England, 

 had become much interested in the cultivation of his royal acres at 

 Windsor. He was a stock breeder too, as well as a farmer. Although 

 intractable and pertinacious, as were his Guelph progenitors, in affairs 

 of state, he was a sober prince, fond of country life, and a lover of 

 fine farm stock. Placable in domestic life, with his cousin-German 

 Queen, quite as domestic as himself, and their large family of chil- 

 dren, he spent much of his time at the palace of Windsor, supervising 

 and directing his farm. In his various attentions to stock breeding 

 His Majesty had made the acquaintance of the celebrated Robert 

 Bakewell, a stock raiser and farmer in Leicestershire, who had acquired 

 a wide reputation in breeding up the "Long-horned" cattle of his 

 district into an excellence of quality hitherto unknown. Bakewell 

 had also given a new variety of long-wooled sheep to the kingdom, 

 by a careful course of breeding from the rather scraggy-bodied, long- 

 wools then prevalent in his vicinity. To such excellence and popu- 

 larity had he raised these sheep that they afterwards assumed the 

 several names of New Leicester, Dishley, (the name of his farm,) 

 and Bakewell, as those who purchased from him and bred them chose 

 to call the improved variety. 



Bakewell was born in the year 1726, and died in 1795. He had 

 pursued his vocation as a breeder long and successfully, became 

 wealthy, was a man of large hospitality for a farmer of those days 

 received many visits from noblemen of rank, who sought his advice 

 in improving their farm stock, and among others George the Third 

 had made him -visits on the same errand, consulting him freely, and 

 buying of his stock. Bakewell's system of breeding was his own, 

 widely different from the usual practice of the English stock breeders 

 of his day, and with him entirely original, as then considered. He 

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