152 
Agricultural Worth ies 
paratively with the feeding properties of mangel-wurzel and 
Swedish turnips; and in others he applies to such matters as 
the breeding of stock and the gestation of cows that aptitude 
for intricate calculations which has been already alluded to. 
Indeed, his biographer states that at one time this inclination 
very nearly induced him to go on the Turf, and he attended a 
few meetings at Newmarket ; but his interest in racing soon 
became confined to entertaining an annual party at AViseton 
for the Doncaster week, when it was not unusual for visitors 
to strike a bargain with their host for the next calf of any 
cow to which they took a fancy. 
It was on one of these occasions, in the autumn of 1845, 
that Lord Spencer was seized with an illness which shortly after- 
wards proved fatal. Being for the first time a steward of Don- 
caster Races, with Lord George Bentinck for his colleague, Lord 
Spencer took lodgings in the town, and it was here that he was 
seized with indisposition ; but he did not allow this to prevent 
him from joining his guests at dinner in the evening. Gradu- 
ally, however, the attack assumed a much more serious aspect, 
and though he afterwards rallied sufficiently to bear being 
moved to Wiseton, a rapid change for the worse soon rendered 
his condition so alarming that he gave up all hope of recovery, 
the sudden collapse of his physical powers being attributed to 
weakness arising from his habitual abstinence from food through 
fear of his hereditary enemy, the gout. 
Lord Spencer breathed his last early in the morning of 
October 1, and the Council of the Boyal Agricultural Society, 
in recording the severe loss it had sustained, expressed " their 
deep sense of his private virtues, and of the valuable services he 
had so uniformly and unweariedly rendered to the Society in 
promoting every practical object connected with its welfare and 
the general advancement of agricultural improvement." His 
position as one of the Trustees was taken by his brother, and 
successor in the title, the father of the present Earl ; anH the 
vacancy on the Council thus created was appropriately filled by the 
election of his old friend and colleague, Mr. John Grey of Dilston. 
This notice of one whom the members of the Royal Agricul- 
tural Society must always regard with reverence, cannot be better 
closed than by subjoining some extracts from Mr. Charles 
Greville's masterly estimate of Lord Spencer's character, written 
by that keen observer of men and manners within a month of 
Lord Spencer's lamented death : — 
He was the vory model and type of an English gentleman, filling with 
propriety the station in which fortune bad placed him, and making the best 
use of the abilities which Nature had bestowed upon him. Modest without 
