THOMAS BATES' BREEDING. 121 



spent a considerable time in the University at Edinburgh, and 

 received a good education. Being of rather a slender constitution, 

 and studious in habit, he was intended for the Church; but that 

 calling not suiting his more active temperament, he chose agriculture 

 as a profession. He began his agricultural education at Aydon 

 Castle, in the neighborhood of which lived George Culley, an emi- 

 nent stock breeder and agricultural writer, from whom young Bates 

 in his frequent intimacies took sound lessons in his newly-chosen 

 pursuit. This period of his life must have been at about sixteen or 

 seventeen years of age ; but according to some of his own remarks 

 in later years, he speaks of knowing the Collings and their stock as 

 early as 1782. So early a day, however, we think a mistake, as in 

 that year he could only have been five or six years old. There are 

 other anachronisms of date in some of his narrations of events, inad- 

 vertent, possibly, but which, if true, would make him many years 

 older than he is stated. In an article written by him in 1842, he says : 

 " It is n(nv above sixty years since I became impressed with the im- 

 portance of selecting the very best animals to breed from, and for 

 twenty-five years afterwards lost no opportunity of ascertaining the 

 merits of the various tribes of Short-horns." This would put his 

 birth back some years anterior to 1775, the date given by his biogra- 

 pher, as he could scarcely be expected to have much judgment in 

 the way of cattle before he was at least twelve or fifteen years old. 

 There may possibly be an error as to his birth in 1775, as we have 

 heard it remarked by several persons who knew him not long previ- 

 ous to his death in 1849, that he must, from appearances and his own 

 statements, have been at the time of their conversations with him, 

 although active and vigorous, quite eighty years of age. The fact, 

 is now of little consequence; but that at a very early age he had 

 imbibed a passionate love of farm stock, there can be no question. 



After a few years at Aydon Castle, and under his majority, he 

 became a tenant farmer under his father on the estate of Park End, 

 in the vale of North Tyne, where he showed his aptitude for farming 

 and improving land, fencing, and various other economies in agricul- 

 ture. There he remained until the year 1800, when he took the 

 extensive farm and estate of Halton Castle, also in Northumberland, 

 where he began stock rearing and grazing on his own account. It 

 appears that he first adopted the Kyloes, or West Highland cattle, 

 which it was the custom to drive in large numbers from the rougher 

 lands in Scotland down to the richer farms of the north of England, 

 to fatten for market. Soon afterwards, these not altogether suiting 



