THE BOOTH HERDS. IOI 



her daughters, the queenly quartette. Young Matchem (4422) is 

 descended from White Rose, own sister of Young Albion, and there- 

 fore, on the dam's side, of the Halnaby family, and the same branch 

 of it gives the dam, Young Rachel, of Mr. Ambler's Grand Turk. 



" The Bracelet tribe sprung from a cow by Suworrow, of whose 

 origin there is no record. She was the ancestress of a very superior 

 cow, calved in 1812, Countess, by Albion (14), the Alloy bull; also 

 of Toy, and her twin daughters Necklace -and Bracelet, and of Col. 

 Towneley's Pearly, and Mr. Torr's Young Bracelet tribe. 



" The early representatives of the above mentioned tribes formed 

 the herd of Mr. Thomas Booth down to the year 1814, when (his 

 son) Mr. Richard Booth, taking the Studley farm, near Ripon, left 

 Killerby. Mr. Thomas Booth was at that time the most enterprising 

 and skillful improver of cattle in his district, if not of his day.* It 

 is said there were some cows in Mr. Thomas Booth's herd of that 

 period as good as any herd "of the present time can boast ; though, 

 being bred for use rather than show, the generality of them were 

 wanting in the refinement of the modern Short-horn. At that period 

 there were, happily, no shows to demand the sacrifice of the best 

 cattle in the kingdom, or the few that were held could be reached by 

 the majority of cattle attending them only by such long journeys on 

 foot as would be impracticable by animals in such a state of obesity 

 as is now a sine qua non with the judicial triumvirate. High feeding 

 at that time meant no more than good pasture for cows early dried of 

 their milk j and the term * training ' was never heard except in rela- 

 tion to horses. The first breeder who introduced the system, which 

 has since run into such ruinous excess, of house-feeding cows and 

 heifers in summer on artificial food, was Mr. Crofton ; and in that 

 year he, of course, took all before him in the show yards. The gen- 

 eral treatment of the females of a herd at that day was a simple hay 

 diet during the winter months. They were put early to breeding, 

 and generally calved at two years old. A few were taken from the 

 lot to milk. The remainder suckled their calves until winter. They 

 were then taken up, dried, and fed off by the time they were three 

 years old ; the same course being pursued, in their turn, with their 

 progeny. 



" Mr. Thomas Booth was as liberal as his successors in allowing 

 the free use of his bulls to his poor neighbors ; and, like most public 

 benefactors, was occasionally imposed upon. A ludicrous instance 



* Rather too laudatory, we think. L. F. A. 



