THE MATCH EM COW. 129 



in the year 1834 offered to sell her, then two years old, to Mr. Ferix 

 Renick, to be taken to the United States. This fact has been dis- 

 puted here but only on the negative testimony of a party who went 

 out with Mr. Renick, and did not personally hear either the offer or 

 its refusal. To set the truth of the fact at rest, which we stated (as 

 received in the year 1841, from Mr. A. B. Allen, of New York, to 

 whom Mr. Bates himself told it), we quote from a letter of Mr. Bates 

 to Mr. Renick, written a year or two after the latter was in England : 

 " Broken Leg (Duchess 34th), I offered you at 100 guineas. If you 

 were to send twenty times that sum for her and her produce, I would 

 not take it now." The full letter is found in "Bell's History," p. 227. 

 She had, when the letter was written, produced the bull Duke of 

 Northumberland (1940) to Mr. Bates, and it proved fortunate for him 

 that Mr. Renick did not take her. 



We here temporarily leave the Duchess tribe to notice a new intro- 

 duction into his herd, viz. : - 



. 



THE MATCHEM Cow, 



By which we arrive at another era in the choice breeding of Mr. Bates 

 through the infusion of a new cross of .blood into his Duchess tribe, 

 and the history is too important to be omitted. We condense it from 

 Mr. Bates' own account, as given in " The New Farmers' Journal" 

 (English), dated August 6, 1841. "I purchased her in 1831, she then 

 being four years old, at the sale of Mr. Brown, who had purchased 

 her granddam at public sale many years before. The catalogue of 

 Mr. Brown's sale only stated that the cow was by Matchem (2281),* 

 and her dam by Young Wynyard (2859). The pedigree then traced 

 no further the original owner of the stock being dead previous to 

 the sale [at which Mr. Brown bought her] but I have since learned 

 from those who knew the stock for many years, that the greatest 



* The published pedigree of Matchem (2281), E. H. B., states that he was got by Boimy Face 

 (807) or St. Albans (1412), but the fact has since been generally conceded among the older breed- 

 ers that St. Albans was the true sire of Matchem. St. Albans was a pure Princess bull, being got 

 by Wynyard (703), out of Nell Gwynn, by Phenomenon (491), Princess, by Favorite (252), by 

 Favorite (252), etc., running back through Hubback (319) to Studley bull (626). 



An odd story, connected with St. Albans, is related by Mr. Dixon in " Saddle and Sirloin." 

 The bull was at first called " Prince," and fell into the hands of a Mr. Wood, who did not at all 

 appreciate him, and sold him to a butcher, whom Mr. Mason covertly engaged to buy him for 

 ^20 ($100). Three years afterwards Wood being at Chilton (Mr. Mason's place), he caught a 

 glimpse of St. Alban's head, then fifteen years old, and exclaimed : u Why, this is my old 

 Prince ; he was bought to kill." Mason, however, better knew the value of the bull. He had 

 re-named him St. Albans, and bred him in his herd, and the bull thus became the sire of a noted 

 progeny. L. F. A. 



