126 HISTORY OF THE SHORT-HORNS. 



his 32d Duchess (the last one begotten exclusively by the Duchess 

 bulls, with the exception of the Marske and 2d Hubback crosses) 

 was calved. 



With the production of Duchess 32d, Mr. Bates halted, and wisely. 

 From the possession of his Duchess ist, in 1810, for a period of 

 twenty-two years, we find but thirty-one of her female descendants 

 recorded in the Herd Books. There were, meantime, sundry bulls 

 dropped from them, but mostly sold to other breeders, excepting those 

 which he had used in breeding, and even they had been, during some 

 seasons, let out for service to various parties. The simple fact was, 

 the Duchess cows, as a whole, had not been prolific, or constant 

 breeders, through abortions or other causes, and whenever they passed 

 a year or two without breeding, he fed off and slaughtered them.* 

 The bulls descended from them showed no lack of virility, and Bates 

 still contended that the tribe had increased in their fineness of quality, 

 were admirable feeders, and good milkers when breeding. He was 

 at a stand how further to proceed, and was really unhappy. He 

 had little faith in the blood of his neighboring breeders, however 

 good many of their individual animals might have been, (a crotchet 

 of his own, perhaps,) and although he had tried one or two of their 

 bulls on some of his other tribes of cows, he did not, except in two 

 or three individual cases, risk his Duchesses with them. From his 

 occasional attacks on their blood (for he was prone to speak his mind 

 freely of what he either liked or disliked) he had somewhat aroused 

 their ire, and could find no relief in anything they had to offer him, 

 if indeed, any offer of their assistance was made. He would not go 

 to the Booths, as they contended that four crosses of well-bred pedi- 

 gree bulls, on good, well-bred cows, originally without recorded pedi- 

 grees, were sufficient for the establishment of standard blood. Nor 

 would he go to Mason, Wetherell, Maynard, or any other of the old 

 breeders for a bull, as he found some flaw or other, more or less, in 

 their pedigrees, or with being tainted late in the last century with the 

 " Alloy " (Galloway) blood of Charles Colling, through the " Grandson 

 of Bolingbroke" (280). 



Hearing that Mr. John Stephenson, living at Wolviston, about 

 twelve miles distant, had some stock descended from the Princess 

 tribe of Robert Colling (and of which Stephenson had become pos- 

 sessed through Sir Henry Vane Tempest, and his wife, the Countess 

 of Antrim, who had years before bought it from Colling), he rode 



* Bell's History. 



