Robert RakeiveU. 
25 
in Warwickshire Mr. Webster, of Canley, had also effected much 
improvement. The reason why these two names stand out in 
the history of the Longhorn as an improved breed is perhaps 
questionable. Without detracting in the least from the excel- 
lence of their work, as compared with anything else in the same 
direction done in those days in the Midland counties until 
Bakewell came upon the scene, we may be allowed to doubt 
whether they excelled some of the forgotten breeders in the 
Northern counties. The bull Bloxedge, called by Youatt the 
Hubback of the Longhorns, was the son of a Lancashire sire. 
Thirty or forty years ago Lunesdale retained traditions which 
have nearly died out with old inhabitants whose memory 
reached back to their childhood, when their grandfathers in 
the chimney-nook told of the grand herds of Longhorns all up 
that valley and on the fell farms of Barbon and Casterton and 
all through the dales over Skipton way. “ The Craven heifer,” 
as portrayed on the board swinging over the doorway of many 
a village hostelry, displayed a degree of embonpoint worthy of 
Canley or of Dishley. But the signboard painter came again, 
and went, and as his American prototype in Rip van Winkle 
had dexterously metamorphosed “ The King’s Head ” into that 
of the immortal Washington, the Yorkshire artist, although he 
left behind him, indeed, the name unaltered, had “touched up” 
the white back and brindled sides to a bloomy roan, and for the 
old-fashioned horns had substituted a dainty little pair of a 
waxy-yellow colour. 
The original portrait may be supposed to have represented, 
with or without exaggeration, the Longhorn of the North of 
England at the time when Robert Bakewell founded his herd 
by the purchase of two heifers from Mr. Webster and a bull from 
Westmoreland. From these pure Longhorns he bred the whole 
of his herd ; but how many others he ever had as tributaries of 
different but equally pure blood we have no evidence to show. 
The writer is not aware of the existence of any evidence to show 
that he crossed his Longhorns at any time with another breed. 
There are, however, in the imperfect records of some of his 
Longhorn pedigrees which have come down to us through 
Marshall blanks which possibly may be filled by Longhorns 
unrelated to his original three. One of the Canley heifers 
was Comely. She was slaughtered at the age of twenty-six 
years, and historically is known as Old Comely. Some parts of 
her were seen in pickle at Dishley, years after her death, among 
Mr. Bakewell’s relics of his most remarkable animals, and it is 
recorded that the fat on her sirloin was four inches thick. The 
celebrated bull Twopenny was a son of Old Comely, and of the 
