346 Rise and Progress of the Leicester Breed of SJieep. 
10 guineas cacli from tlie late Mr. Sanday. He was wont to 
say, " I would choose for myself. Sir, and I chose very badly ; 
if there was one with very delicate, transparent ears, I took her." 
The ten came in the Holmpierrepont waggon to Lincoln, and 
there the enthusiastic young flockmaster met them with his shep- 
herd and drove them a three days' journey to Barton Ferry. 
The Baronet loved a small, thrifty sheep, and he did not look 
for a very thickly planted fleece on the Wolds. He liked to 
feel for the cloven back in a ram as the index of good, firm 
flesh, and often pointed out with pride this little peculiarity in his 
chesnut blood sire, Daniel O'Rourke. Only grass, turnips, and 
hay were used in the manufacture of Sledmere wool and mutton ; 
and cake, corn, and peas found no place in his fold-stores. In 
his earlier days he always bid stoutly when he fancied a lot, 
and at Mr. Robert Collings's sale he went as high as 156 guineas 
for the shearling Ajax rather than be beaten by Mr, Baker of 
Elemore. When the Cotgrave flock was dispersed in 1844, he 
went up to 100 guineas for the three-shear N by D R ; and that 
" pillar of the flock," D H, who clipped 14 lbs., and died shortly 
before the sale, might have tempted him still farther. For some 
years before his death he used his own blood entirely, and let 
from 100 to 110 rams at Eddlethorpe to neighbouring ram- 
breeders and his tenants, who made a large muster. It quite 
brought back the Sir Roger de Coverley days to see him return their 
quiet salutations as he rode out of the paddock after a letting, 
with the Sledmere clergyman on a stout cob by his side. The 
letting in the September of 1862 was his 59th, and his last. 
His prices were not high ; and he was, we believe, only once 
known to reach 60?. 
He never would prepare anything for show, but the Sledmere 
blood has gone well to the fore since his death, both in the hands 
of Lord Bemers and Mr. Borton, at the Royal Agricultural and 
the Yorkshire, as well as the Christmas shows. 
On the afternoon of June 19, 1798 — just five years after Mr. 
Paget, the President of the Bakewell Club had sold a pen of 
ewes at 62Z. a-piece, — Holmpierrepont in Mr. Nathaniel Stubbins's 
hands, became a Dishley removed. The sum total of the 
lettings on that day was 31 rams for 2,176?. l%s., and Philip 
Skipworth went as high as 600 guineas. Seven years after, the 
ewe-serving charge had not only been raised to 300 guineas for 
70 and 200 guineas for 40 ewes ; but in 1805 the letting average 
was nearly 100 gs. for 31 rams — subject to a liberal private dis- 
count. In 1814, the division of the flock took place between Mr. 
Joseph and Mr. Robert Burgess, the former remaining, as he had 
done in his uncle's life time, atHolmpierrepont, and the latter going 
to Cotgrave Place. In about four years, the brothers joined 
flocks and lambed about 20 score of ewes annually ; and ]Mr. 
