Polled Aberdeen and Angus Cattle. 
359 
related or not. He no doubt discovered that under his improved 
system of breeding, which may truly be called a system of 
" selection," he could raise better animals than could be found 
on Trinity Muir, or anywhere else in those days, and that of 
course led him to breed in closer relationship than he might 
otherwise have done. He may not have approved of in-and-in 
breeding in principle, but, like the earlier improvers of Short- 
horns, he frequently put it into practice, with results that were 
eminently satisfactory. 
Early in his career Hugh Watson achieved great success in 
the Showyard with his improved polled cattle. During his first 
twenty years he won over a hundred prizes in national as well 
as local Shows. He made his first appearance as an exhibitor 
of polled animals at the Show of the Highland and Agricultural 
Society at Perth in 1829. His first-prize pair of polled oxen 
on that occasion attracted much attention by their size, sym- 
metry, and quality. One of these was a great beauty, and a 
choice butchers' animal. He was exhibited at the Smithfield 
Show in London the same year, and there too he was greatly- 
admired. When slaughtered by a leading metropolitan butcher 
(Mr. Sparks, of High Street, Marylebone), his carcass was found- 
to be of very rare quality, the meat being fine in the grain and' " 
well mixed ; while his fat weighed no less than 240 lbs. — about 
84 lbs. more than the fat of the famous " Durham Ox." Another 
remarkable animal shown at Perth in 1829 by Hugh Watson 
was a heifer, which like the oxen were bred by himself, and 
which at the request of the Highland Society was exhibited at the 
London Smithfield Show as a sample of the excellence to which 
the Scotch Polled breed might be brought. There she was the 
admired of all admirers. She was then 4^ years old, and her 
dead weight was estimated at between 130 and 140 stones. Before 
being slaughtered, she, like the " Durham Ox," was publicly 
exhibited for some time. Her purchaser at Smithfield paid 50/. 
for her — a very handsome price for more than half a century ago. 
She was a round, low-set compact animal, the symmetry and 
evenness of her parts having been wonderful. The bone of her 
fore-leg, which her breeder long kept in his possession, is said 
to have been little thicker than that of a roe-deer. At the time 
she was killed, her brisket was barely 8 inches from the ground, 
and her inside fat was found to be equal in weight to one-fourth 
of her gross dead weight. 
Another wonderful animal of Hugh Watson's breeding de- 
serves notice. " Old Grannie," or the Prima Cow, No. 1 in the 
' Polled Herd-book,' was one of the most remarkable animals 
of the cattle kind that ever lived, and formed a good example of 
the hardy character and longevity of the breed to which she 
■VOL. XVII. — S. S. 2 C 
