THE UNITED KINGDOM. 



185 



The whole 20 sold for 2,123, or an average of 100 Gs. each. 



I have also seen at Mr. Ledbrook's, who succeeded Mr. Grace at Put- 

 lowes a few years since, when the price of meat was lower than in the be- 

 ginning of the century, 50 oxen tied up for Chistraas at the end of Novo;n- 

 ber, for which be had been bid 2,500; the price was rather under 5s. p^r 

 stone, but this would have made them average over 200 stone per head. 

 The class of animal I have been describing is now no more. They were 

 five-year old worked beasts, and even older, which had been for two or 

 three years harnessed to the yoke, and had therefore attained great size. 

 Working in the plow is now comparatively rare, and early maturity is 

 the aim of all the best farmers in England, and the Hereford breeders 

 are not likely to be left behind. It is a rare thing nowadays to purchase 

 a Hereford steer at a fair over three years old. When I began farming, 

 thirty years ago, I bought a lot of beautiful three-year-old Hereford 

 steers in October at 13 105. each, in poor condition. I gave them the 

 run of the straw yard, and 3 pounds of oil-cake per day, and turned 

 them out to grass in May, and sold them in August and September at 

 from 23 to 24 each, giving me some excellent manure and a good 

 profit on the animals. The price of this class of beast rapidly rose, and 

 now they can scarcely be bought under 21 to 22 each, and as they 

 only make about 20 or 27 each when off the grass, they do not pay 

 enough. I once went to a Hereford fair at Easter and bought 10 of the 

 finest old worked beasts I ever saw at 29 10s. each. They were large, 

 fine-framed animals, and when they arrived at Aylesbury Baron Mayer 

 de Rothschild saw them and begged I would let him have them, and I 

 consented on condition that he gave me a round of one of them for my 

 Christmas dinner the same year. He took them to Mentmore, and some 

 made 46 to 47 each at Christmas, and others went off the grass in 

 October at 38 to' 40 each, but such aged beasts are not found now. 

 Amongst the most noted graziers of these cattle was the late Mr. Senior, 

 of Bronghton pastures, near Aylesbury. This gentleman was a very 

 successful exhibitor of Herefords after Mr. Westcar's death, but of late 

 years he grazed Sussex beasts, as he could not get the worked animals 

 from Herefordshire. Mr. Duckham and other writers on Herefordshire 

 cattle say that the county is not by any means a good grazing district, 

 but eminently adapted for breeding and rearing cattle, and .that no class 

 of animal thrives so well, when changed on to the fine pastures of Buck- 

 inghamshire, Leicestershire, and ^Northamptonshire. 



As Mr. Westcar's name and his residence at Creslow has been so 

 often quoted by all writers upon the Herefords, I must be pardoned for 

 giving a slight sketch of this famous grazing district. "The great 

 ground," as it is called at Creslow, is, as before stated, about 330 acres 

 and is very undulating, and bounded on two sides by a brook, a tribu- 



