272 Saddle and Sirloin. 



It is quite a " popular error," that a Yorkshireman 

 cares about no live stock save horses. " Give her the 

 glory of going on, and still to be," from Tennyson's 

 " Wages," would certainly suggest to him an epitaph 

 for a mare that could stay a distance, and his only 

 doubt would be about adding " there or thereabouts" 

 to his author, but still sheep, pigs, and shorthorns 

 have a strong grip of his affections. The agricultural 

 year always seems to lack one of its pleasantest 

 elements if we have missed the Yorkshire meeting. 

 Some linger in the county six weeks from its date, 

 and what with Doncaster, York, and Ripon races, 

 visits to herds, racing-stables, studs, agricultural shows, 

 foal shows, and ram lettings, a gentle St. Leger ex- 

 citement, more especially if John Scott has a favourite, 

 as in " the brave days of old," with a dash of Har- 

 rogate and Scarborough thrown in for flavour, those 

 pilgrims may well call their sojourn the very " sweet 

 o' the year." 



Leeds looked more dreary than ever, as we passed 



7th, the "best cow or heifer" in the yard at Birmingham in 1858. 

 Five years after Mr. Smith took the gold medal at Smithfield, but with 

 a cow bred by his brother Mr. William Smith, of West Razen. The 

 purchase of Captain Shaftoe (6833) at one of his brother's sales for 

 40 guineas was a great hit, and the sole drawback about him was his 

 aversion not to a red but to a black coat, a whim which nearly proved 

 fatal to Mr. Parkinson at the Leyfields sale. " The Captain" had then 

 seen twelve summers and he left seventeen heifer calves behind him. 

 One of their daughters, Helen from Annie, was sold to Mr. Majori- 

 banks at ten months for 80 guineas, and proved the sire of Harkaway, 

 the first Royal prize bull-calf at Canterbury. The meadows were full 

 of reds, or rich red roans, whose compact frames, level tops, and good 

 deep middles, told of the gay little Captain's handiwork, which Booth's 

 Bridesman (12,493), War Eagle, The Monk, and Prince of Warlaby 

 followed up. 



The name and pedigree of each shorthorn was hung above it in the 

 byre, a process the necessity of which was enforced on Mr. Smith by 

 finding that an Irish herdsman in his absence had become puzzled, and 

 had not only given a wrong and a most tremendously high pedigree to 

 an intending purchaser, but maintained that — "Sure, sir, and I was 

 right to put in the best word I could for the puir beast" 



