The late George Turner. 
697 
managed he had ever seen, and the home herd as " the best 
eighty Devon cattle in England ;" and the farming notes of 
what he saw on the way up and down are as hearty, bright, 
and incisive as he could have written had he been fifty years 
younger. 
Mr. Turner was one of a family who had settled in Devon- 
shire from time immemorial, and in the parish of Cadbury, on 
the family estate, for two centuries and more. He thus was 
thorough Devonshire, and is well designated in a newspaper 
notice of his final sale : — " George Turner, a worthy successor 
of Arthur Young, of Bakewell, and of Coke, who has made 
Devon famous in the agricultural world." 
The end was not long delayed. Born on August 1, 1793, 
he died on June 1, 1884. Strong-voiced, resolute, and whole- 
hearted to the end, the gallant old gentleman had ridden the 
whole run with the hounds, a ten-mile point, coming in at the 
death of the stag, so lately as 1876, in the eighty-fourth year 
of his age. He had retained the management of his home- 
farm throughout, without any help or interference. His broad- 
brimmed white hat had been conspicuous for sixty years and 
more wherever countrymen gathered, whether in market-place, 
in Showyard, or in the field ; and there was hardly a grey hair 
under it even at the last. " Turner," he once heard a whisper 
in the midst of business at the Council table, on the occasion 
of one of his last attendances, " what hair-dye is it that does 
so well with you? " " Temperance, my lord," was the prompt 
reply ; " you just try it !" 
Mr. Turner is worthily succeeded in the agricultural world 
by his second son George, who occupies the farm of Thorpe- 
lands, near Northampton, where the pure Leicester flock 
is still in existence, and whence it is annually sent to take 
prizes in our Showyards. He had followed there another note- 
worthy agriculturist, who has long since passed away — 
Mr. Clarke Hillyard, whose book on the practice of farming 
stands first upon the list of donations to our Library (see 
' Journal,' vol. i. 1840), and whose white head and ready tongue 
I well remember many years ago as he descanted on the merits ol 
the prize Devon ox with which he had just taken the Gold 
Medal of the Smithfield Club. Mr. Turner's eldest son is the 
Rev. W. B. Turner, of Braywood Vicarage, near Windsor. 
Another son is in business in Manchester ; and his fourth son 
is Major Turner, of the Bengal Staff Corps. 
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