Killer by and War lady Recollections. 199 



as proud a beacon to the Yorkshireman as " Belvoir's 

 wooded height is to the Leicestershire Nimrod, or the 

 iEginetan Oros to the Grecian manner." 



"October 31^/, Richard Booth, of Warlaby, aged 

 76." Such was the trite and fitting line in which the 

 Times announced (a.d. 1864) the death of this premier 

 of shorthorn breeders. It was grand in its simplicity, 

 as it so exactly typified the conscious power and 

 sturdy self-reliance of the man whose name embodies 

 a family career, with its tap-root in the days when 

 Comet's great grandam was still a calf, and when Sam 

 Wiley had not abandoned his marbles and his satchel. 

 Richard Booth was in truth a very Pope among breeders, 

 and dispensed his thirty bulls with a high and lordly 

 hand. Still there was the great fact which none could 

 gainsay, that go where they might they left a good and 

 lasting impress on a herd and an average, and that 

 they had wrought a peaceful revolution in Ireland. 

 Hence all Shorthorn breeders found it politic to stand 

 well with the master of Warlaby ; and even then the 

 difficulty of getting a bull was somewhat analogous at 

 times to election at The Athenaeum. The demand 

 was invariably in excess of the supply, and therefore 

 prices might well keep up, and 300 guineas (as in Crown 

 Prince's case) be once more bid in vain for one year's 

 hire, when Prince of Battersea from Queen of the 

 Ocean was destined to be " in residence." Few men 

 had the courage to talk to him in praise of any other 

 sort. He stood on the deep flesh, the compact frame, 

 the rare foreflank, the unmistakeable family likeness, 

 &c. ; and when he made a suspected cynic point him 

 out one or two of the most robust of the lot, he would 

 tell him that Lady Grace, for instance, was about the 

 closest bred, and leave him to think out for himself 

 the marvellous constitution of a herd which could 

 stand hard forcing and in-breeding so well. He began 

 at Studley when he was twenty-nine, and when he 

 sold off in 1834, many of the lots were, as an eye- 



