Mr Hall Maxwell 5 



If he appeared in a Committee-room to support or 

 oppose on behalf of the Society, it was with such a 

 well-marshalled and serried mass of facts and wit- 

 nesses that it was always odds on him. At Battersea 

 and Paris he was quite in his element, looking after 

 Scottish interests. When in '61 he led the hundred- 

 and-twenty herdsmen and shepherds to Battersea- 

 nelds, he lodged them in Edgington tents, and fur- 

 nished them with beds borrowed expressly from the 

 Tower. They had regular night-watches like soldiers ; 

 certain detachments of them made holiday at the 

 Exhibition or the Crystal Palace, and on Sunday they 

 were marched to Westminster Abbey. This was the 

 only time that we ever saw him in complete sympathy 

 with the stock classes. He seemed to care nothing 

 about the very finest show animals or their points, 

 and to merely regard them as necessary links in his 

 system. Neither Belville, nor old Charlotte, nor 

 Colly Hill, nor Loudon Tarn, "that very Blair Athole 

 among Clydesdales," had made any impression on 

 him. He only wished to see the classes worthily 

 filled ; the cracks he left to his friend, Mr. Gourlay 

 Steell, " to be translated." 



As a private companion none could exceed him, 

 and to us his stories were all the more salient, when 

 they turned on his recollections of his own Society. 

 He loved to recount the Parisian speculations and 

 observations of " Boghall," who did him such yeoman 

 service as cattle manager on that famous international 

 trip ; and he unconsciously gave us a delightful speci- 

 men of his best official manner in his recital of 

 " Duncan's Arrest at Perth." It seems that the late 

 Duke of Athole, who was then president of the 

 Society, went to Mr. Duncan the night before the 

 show opened at Perth and demanded a stock cata- 

 logue. With unswerving fidelity to his chief, who had 

 given express orders to the contrary, Mr. Duncan re- 

 spectfully declined to hand over, and the Duke (whose 



