3-016-871 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

Royal Butterfly, the property of Lieutenant-Colonel Towneley, 1864. Engraving from a photograph by Messrs. Wood and Co. ' "The Royal," as he is familiarly termed, was never beaten but once - as a calf - when the Royal Agricultural met at Chester. He was then the only one highly commended in an entry of twenty...He was calved on Aug. 12, 1857, and is now as fresh as ever he was, and that too at an age when, as his devoted trainer, Mr. Culshaw, tersely puts it, "most bulls are on the shelf or under the sod."...His busiest season was that of 1863. Beginning at Dublin Spring, where he met and vanquished the Irish champion, Soubadar, for the Farmer's Gazette Challenge Cup, given for the best beast in the yard. He also won cups at Rochdale and Lancaster; and, after being on the rails nearly all night, won the challenge cup for the best lot from one herd...He then took Halifax on his way home, and won another; started the next week for Keighley, won the cup for the best of three, in company with Eleventh Royal Butterfly and Double Butterfly; and on the next day he went on to Wigton, to win Mr. Clark Irving's cup and beat the Worcester winner Duke of Tyne'. From "Illustrated London News", 1864.