Mr. Bates. 153 



of the Princess of Barmpton and the Duchess of Ketton 

 blood was now the problem which puzzled the lord of 

 Kirklevington, and which Belvedere so happily solved. 

 Oddly enough, this bull had been living only ten miles 

 off him, and for two long years his friend, Mr. Atkin- 

 son Greenwell, had urged him to go and have a look. 

 One day he did condescend to drive over, and strange 

 as the coincidence may seem, the moment he in his 

 turn merely glanced at the bull's head through a 

 square hole, he knew that it was the blood he was 

 seeking ; and he said to himself, " Thou art mine, if 

 money 7/ buy thee!' And buy him he did, then and 

 there, for 50/., which he drew in notes from his pocket, 

 and permission to " send cows to the bull while he 

 lives." The man demurred when the money was paid, 

 and said rather sorrowfully to a friend afterwards, 

 " / might as well have had a hundred from Tommy 

 Bates — he was so varra keen of him"* 



* The Waterloo and Wild Eyes were fresh additions about the era of 

 Belvedere, from whose cross with Red Rose 9th came Cambridge Rose 

 1st ; and so well did it nick, that Belvedere was put on her in turn. At 

 the sale, however, this tribe was reduced to Cambridge Rose 5th, and 

 her two calves by Third Duke of York. The great triumph of Belve- 

 dere was still to come from another cross with his own daughter, 

 Duchess 34th, who beat Necklace at York. She had broken her fore- 

 leg, and Mr. Bates was within an ace of selling her to the Americans, 

 but luckily Mr. Whitaker got him off it, and she lived to produce the 

 Duke of Northumberland a few months after. With the exception of 

 this famous roan, she never bred any but red and whites, and Mr. Bates 

 was determined to try the effect of a third Belvedere cross with his prize 

 yearling at Oxford (which was own sister to the Fourth Duke of 

 Northumberland) if she had not been prematurely choked with a turnip. 

 To the eye of a well-known authority on these matters, " Duke" looked 

 a very delicate calf at five months ; but his owner, strong in the faith 

 of the double Favourite cross in Comet, which he had here striven to 

 emulate, drew himself proudly up, and said, " Weill sir, I have the 

 greatest hopes of him." After all his honours, "Duke" came to no very 

 glorious end, as he had been kept low for the purpose of being put on 

 Cleveland Lad's stock, and he died fairly maw-bound from the effects of 

 some mouldy hay, leaving the 2nd Duke of Oxford as the inheritor of 

 his honours. It was with " Duke" and the Oxford Cow, and his two 

 Duchess heifers, that Mr. Bates set forth and won every prize he showed 

 for at the first Meeting of the Royal Agricultural Society in 1839. 



