d 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