THOMAS BATES' BREEDING. 119 



While at his home in 1841, Mr. Bates told Mr. Allen that he 

 intended to write a history of the Short-horns for publication, and 

 had already made many notes for that purpose. That history, how- 

 ever, he never wrote out, nor published. From those notes and 

 various letters and other publications left by him, at a period of twenty 

 years after his decease Mr. Bell has compiled his book, together with 

 various collateral matter drawn from the writings of others, and inter- 

 spersed with occasional notes of his own, some few of which are 

 original with himself. 



Of Mr. Bell's book, its matter and compilation, we have but little 

 to say, as a literary labor. It lacks methodical arrangement. It has 

 not even an index, other than the discursive titles at the heads of its 

 several parts, or chapters, and they in no consecutive order of sub- 

 ject, time, or place. Its chronology is deficient, few dates being 

 given, and what there are of them playing hither and thither in 

 ambuscade, as may happen- during a period of sixty years, disjointed 

 and difficult to connect. In the absence of quotation marks in the 

 text, we hardly know what is the composition of Mr. Bates, and what 

 the compiler's, except by guess, while the various letters and public 

 addresses of Mr. Bates and others are appropriately marked, but in 

 the same disordered arrangement of time as* the other parts of the 

 work; yet, by close examination, we can understand them. The 

 book is not, in fact, a lucid history of either the Short-horns, or even 

 of Mr. Bates, or his cattle breeding, but rather loose memoranda and 

 sketches of history left by Mr. Bates and others. We exceedingly 

 regret that during his life time Mr. Bates himself could not have 

 written out his memoranda for he was capable of doing it and left 

 to the world an intelligible general history of the Short-horns, as well 

 as those of his own breeding. Such a work should have been done 

 by an Englishman, capable of performing it. To obtain a continuous 

 narrative of Mr. Bates' proceedings one is obliged to skip over numer- 

 ous pages, and then turn back to keep a thread of his "history," and 

 arrive at a clear understanding of his action. Still, there is much 

 valuable matter scattered throughout the book which, by diligent 

 research, the reader may appropriate and digest into important 

 information. Yet, bating its deficiencies, we are thankful for the 

 work Mr. Bell has given us, as some new facts, through Mr. Bates' 

 version of them, are stated in his memoranda, containing important 

 information, which, if not hitherto secret, or but partially known, 

 throw light on disputed questions, setting previous inaccuracies at 

 rest. 



