ANTHONY CRUICKSHANK--THE GREATEST HERD OF SHORTHORNS IN THE WORLD--
RETURN TO LONDON AND TERMINATION OF MY TOUR.
Sittyton designates hardly a village in Aberdeenshire, but it has
become a point of great interest to the agricultural world--a second
Babraham. In this quiet, rural district, Anthony Cruickshank, a
quiet, modest, meek-voiced member of the Society of Friends,
"generally called Quakers," has made a history and a great
enterprise of vast value to the world. He is one of those four-
handed but one-minded men who, with a pair to each, build up
simultaneously two great businesses so symmetrically that you would
think they gave their whole intellect, will and genius to one.
Anthony Cruickshank, the Quaker of Sittyton, has made but little
more noise in the world than Nature makes in building up some of her
great and beautiful structures. His footsteps were so light and
gentle that few knew that he was running at all, until they saw him
lead the racers by a head at the end of the course. The world is
wide, and dews of every temperature fall upon its meadow and pasture
lands. Vast regions are fresh and green all the year round,
yielding food for cattle seemingly in the best conditions created
for their growth and perfection. The highest nobility and gentry of
this and other countries are giving to the living statuary of these
animals that science, taste and genius which the most enthusiastic
artists are giving to the still but speaking statuary of the canvas.
The competition in this cultivation of animal life is wide and
eager, and spreading fast over Christendom; emperors, kings,
princes, dukes and belted barons are on the lists. Antipodean
agriculturists meet in the great international concours of cattle,
horses, sheep and swine. Never was royal blood or the inheritance
of a crown threaded through divergent veins to its source with more
care and pride than the lineage of these four-footed "princes" and
"princesses," "dukes" and "duchesses," and "knights" and "ladies" of
the stable and pasture. No peerage ever kept a more jealous
heraldry than the herd-book of this great quadruped noblesse. The
world, by consent, has crowned the Shorthorn Durham as the best
blood that ever a horned animal carried in its veins. Princely
connoisseurs and amateurs, and all the dilettanti as well as
practical agriculturists of Christendom, are giving more thought to
the perfection and perpetuation of this blood than to any other name
and breed. Still--and this distinction is crowned with double merit
by the fact--Anthony Cruickshank, draper of Aberdeen, has worked his
way, gradually and noiselessly, to the very head and front of the
Shorthorn knighthood of the world. While pursuing the occupation to
which he was bred with as much assiduity and success as if it had
every thought and activity which a man should give to a business, he
built up, at a considerable distance from his warehouse, an
enterprise of an entirely different nature, to a magnitude which no
other man has ever equalled. He now owns the largest herd of
Shorthorns in the world, breeding and feeding them to the highest
perfection in the cold and naturally unfertile county of Aberdeen,
which no man of less patience and perseverance would select as the
ground on which to enter the lists against such an array of
competitors in Great Britain and other countries. I regret that my
Notes have already expanded to such a volume as to preclude a more
extended account of his operations in this great field of
usefulness. A few simple facts will suffice to give the reader an
approximate idea of what he has done in this department.
About the year 1825, young Cruickshank was put to a Friends' school
in Cumberland. He was a farmer's son, and seems to have conceived a
great fancy for cattle from childhood. A gentleman resided not far
from the school, who was an owner and amateur of Shorthorns, and
Anthony would frequently spend his half-holidays with him,
inspecting and admiring his herd, and asking him questions about
their qualities and his way of treating them. From this school he
was sent as an apprentice to a trading establishment in Edinburgh,
and at the end of his term set up business for himself as a draper
in Aberdeen. All through this period he carried with him his first
interest in cattle-culture, but was unable to make a beginning in it
until 1837, when he purchased a single Shorthorn cow in the county
of Durham, and soon afterward two other animals of the same blood.
These constituted the nucleus of his herd at Sittyton. One by one
he added other animals of the same stock, purchased in different
parts of England, Ireland and Scotland. With these accessions by
purchase, and from natural increase, his herd grew rapidly and
prospered finely, so that he was obliged to add field to field and
farm to farm to produce feed for such a number of mouths. In a few
years he reached his present maximum which he does not wish to
exceed. That is, his herd now averages annually three hundred head
of this noble and beautiful race of animals, or the largest number
of them owned by any one man in the world. In 1841, he announced
his first sale of young bulls, and every year since that date has
put up at public auction the male progeny of the herd. These sales
usually take place in the first week of October, and are attended by
from 300 to 500 persons from all parts of the kingdom. After
carefully inspecting the various lots, they adjourn to a substantial
luncheon at twelve o'clock, and at one p.m. they repair to the sale
ring and the bidding begins in good earnest, and the auctioneer's
hammer falls quick and often, averaging about a minute and a half to
each lot. Thus the forty lots of young bulls from six to ten months
old are passed away, averaging from 33 to 44 guineas each. Besides
these, from fifty to sixty young bulls, cows and heifers are
disposed of by private sale during the season, ranging from 50 to
150 guineas, going to buyers from all parts of the world.
It is Mr. Cruickshank's well-matured opinion, resulting from long
experience and observation, that there is no breed of cattle so
easily maintained in good condition as the Shorthorns. His are fed
on pasture grass from the 1st of May to the middle of October, lying
in the open field night and day. In the winter they are fed
_entirely on oat-straw and turnips_. Not a handful of hay or of
meal is given them. The calves are allowed to suck their dams at
pleasure. He is convinced that with this simple system of feeding,
together with the bracing air of Aberdeenshire, he has obtained a
tribe of animals of hardy and robust constitutions, of early
maturity, well calculated to improve the general stock of the
country.
It was to me a delight to see this, the greatest herd of Shorthorns
in the world, numbering animals of apparently the highest perfection
to which they could attain under human treatment. What a court and
coterie of "princes," "dukes," "knights" and "ladies" those stables
contained--creatures that would not have dishonored higher names by
wearing them! I was pleased to find that Republics and their less
pretentious titles were not excluded from the goodly fellowship of
this short-horned aristocracy. There was one grand and noble bull
called "President Lincoln," not only, I fancy, out of respect to
"Honest Old Abe," but also in reference to the disposition and
capacities of the animal. Truly, if let loose in some of our New
England fields, he would prove himself a tremendous "railsplitter."
After spending a quiet Sabbath with this old friend and host at his
farm-house at Sittyton, I took the train for Edinburgh and had a
week of the liveliest enjoyment in that city, attending the meetings
of the Social Science Congress. There I saw and heard for the first
time the venerable Lord Brougham, also men and women of less
reputation, but of equal heart and will to serve their kind and
country. I had intended to make a separate chapter on these
meetings and another on the re-unions of the British Association at
Newcastle-upon-Tyne, but the space to which this volume must be
limited precludes any notice of these most interesting and important
gatherings. Stopping at different points on the way, I reached
London about the middle of October, having occupied just four months
in my northern tour; bringing back a heartful of sunny memories of
what I had seen and enjoyed.