This cattle-raising land stirred her to a passionate interest. In the fields through which her route lay cattle came into view from time to time; and hereupon the artist would have the carriage halted, and take notes upon her drawing tablets. Each herd that was encountered meant a new halt and new sketches. The great fair at Falkirk, to which herds were brought from every corner of Scotland, afforded her a unique opportunity for observations and studies. From morning until evening she plied her pencil feverishly, accumulating material for future paintings. At this same fair she purchased a young bull and five superb oxen, to help complete her menagerie. From this journey she brought back a number of pictures of remarkable vigour and beauty. They include a _Morning in the Highlands_, _Denizens of the Highlands_, _Changing Pasture_, _After a Storm in the Highlands_, etc., etc. Rosa Bonheur returned to her studio in the Rue d'Assas and immediately prepared her exhibits for the Universal Exposition of 1855. She was represented there by a _Hay Harvest in Auvergne_, which brought her the grand medal of honour. From this time forward Rosa Bonheur ceased to exhibit at the Salons. She believed, and not without reason, that her reputation had nothing more to gain by these annual offerings, which interrupted her more productive work. She had given herself freely to the public; henceforth she sought only to satisfy the demands of the patrons of art, who, in daily increasing numbers, besieged her with their orders. She worked chiefly for the English, who had given her so warm a welcome, and who, perhaps, had a better sense than the French have, of the beauty of the life of the soil. The Frenchman, good judge that he is in matters of art, duly admires a beautiful work, regardless of its subject; he is able to appreciate the composition of an agricultural scene, but, being little inclined by nature to the work of the fields, he will rarely feel a desire to adorn the walls of his apartment with a _Harvest Scene_ or _Grazing Cattle_; he assumes that it is the business of the museums to acquire pictures of this order. The Englishman is quite different. As a landed proprietor deeply attached to his ancestral acres, he appreciates paintings of rural life, less as an artist than professionally, as a gentleman-farmer who knows all the breeds of cattle and sheep and to whom Rosa Bonheur's paintings were at this epoch veritable documents, quite as much as they were works of art.