fetch much higher prices, and it would be greatly for the advantage of Irish breeders if confidence could be established. Inspection at the ports is utterly useless, as pleuro-pneumonia has been known to lie dormant in the constitution for four months, and even longer.

It has occurred to me that a certificate from the original seller would be our only safeguard, signed by a justice of the peace and a veterinary surgeon; but I am told there are many districts in Ireland where a veterinary surgeon is unknown. There are, no doubt, many Irish cattle that take disease from bad treatment and starvation on board infected steamboats and cattletrucks; for I believe it is a fact that many of the Irish cattle which spread disease in this country hail originally from counties where disease has not been experienced. I have this on the highest authority. I have such a dread of infection that I have never bought more than ten Irish cattle in my life. I have them still (January 1875), and have kept them separate from all other cattle for eight months.

After trying all the breeds of cattle I have specified, I have come to the conclusion that the Aberdeen and Angus polled, and the Aberdeen and North-country crosses, are the cattle best adapted, under ordinary circumstances, in the north of Scotland, for paying the feeder. Our cross-bred cattle, and especially the Southcountry cattle, are greater consumers of food than the pure Aberdeens. This is a part of the subject which has never got the consideration it deserves. When the cross and South-country cattle are two or three years old, and when the day lengthens out, they consume a fearful quantity of food. The age of cattle ought also to be taken into consideration. No doubt a young twoyear-old will grow more than a three-year-old, and for a long keep may pay as well. But I have been always partial to aged cattle; and if you want a quick clearance, age is of great consequence. The great retail London butchers are not partial to "the two teeths,"

as they call them; and I have seen them on the great Christmas-day examining the mouths of cattle before they would buy them. They die badly as to internal fat, and are generally light on the fore-rib. I have always given a preference to aged cattle, as they get sooner fat, are deep on the fore-rib, and require less cake to finish them. Aged cattle, however, are now difficult to be had, and every year they will be scarcer with the present demand for beef.

It is impossible now to secure three-year-old grazing cattle in Morayshire that have not been forced. But we must suit ourselves to circumstances, otherwise we must soon go to the wall. For forty long years I bought almost every grazing bullock in Morayshire. They were, twenty or twenty-five years ago, kept exclusively on turnips and straw. When I went first to that county, the cattle got their turnips carted to the fields. That was a great advantage to the jobber and grazier. It kept the cattle healthy; they retained their old coats, which protected them from the stormy weather; and their feet were well prepared for the road. These were the days of droving; but gradually, with the introduction of steam and bone-dust, the farmers began to see the advantage of feeding their cattle in the open yards. Many of them have now substituted for the open yards closely-covered-in courts; some have left as a sham a small space at one end uncovered. Rather than graze cattle confined over winter in such a manner, I would prefer animals out of the Aberdeenshire byres, where the cattle are regularly put out every day to the air and water. Various means are adopted in some parts of Morayshire and the north to keep the yards warm. I have seen branches of trees, intersected with straw, used to cover some of these courts. Low roofs are general; in some cases, when the manure accumulates, the backs of the cattle are almost in contact with the roofs. Cattle kept in this way are unfit for grazing. How can they stand the cold blasts of May?

Cattle kept in the open strawyard are worth £2 or £3 a-head more to the grazier than those kept in close courts. The apparent cheapness of the confined cattle will soon be counterbalanced by the rapid improvement of the other. The one will advance, while the other will go back. It is a sorrowful sight to see a lot of fine bullocks with their arched backs crouching to the wall, huddled together, in the "cold calendar" of May. The loss is incalculable, and no seller will ever make me believe otherwise.

A perfect breeding or feeding animal should have a fine expression of countenance-I could point it out, but it is difficult to describe upon paper. It should be mild, serene, and expressive. The animal should be fine in the bone, with clean muzzle, a tail like a rat's, and not ewe-necked; short on the legs. He should have a small well-put-on head, prominent eye, a skin not too thick nor too thin; should be covered with fine silky hair to the touch like a lady's glove; should have a good belly to hold his meat; should be straightbacked, well ribbed up, and well ribbed home; his hook-bones should not be too wide apart. A widehooked animal, especially a cow after calving, always has a vacancy between the hook-bone and the tail, and a want of the most valuable part of the carcass. I detest to see hooks too wide apart; they should correspond with the other proportions of the body. A level line should run from the hook to the tail. He should be well set in at the tail, free of patchiness there and all over, with deep thighs, that the butcher may get his second round and prominent brisket deep in the fore-rib, with a good purse below him, which is always worth £1 to him in the London market; well fleshed in the fore-breast, with equal covering of fine flesh all over his carcass, so valuable to the butcher. His outline ought to be such that if a tape is stretched from the fore-shoulder to the thigh, and from the shoulder along the back to the extremity there, the line should

lie close, with no vacancies; and without a void, the line should fill from the hook to the tail. From the shoulder-blade to the head should be well filled upas we say, good in the neck-vein. I am aware that the preceding remarks as to the quality and proportions a beast should possess must be very unsatisfactory to you, as they are to myself; scarcely any one animal has possessed them all, and to look for the half of them in a good commercial beast would be vain. I have consulted no writer upon the subject; they are set down, and not in good order, just as they struck me at the time. Thick legs, thick tails, sunken eyes, and deep necks, with thick skin and bristly hair, always point to sluggish feeders.

In cold weather in the month of May, the old silky coat of the strawyard bullock is of great advantage. If we could get the qualities and proportions I have specified in animals, it would not be difficult to make them fat. It would be difficult only to make them lean, when once in condition. A high standing, want of ribbingup and ribbing-home, with the tucked-up flank, always denote a worthless feeder. You must all have observed how difficult it is to bring such cattle into a state for killing. It will take a deal of cake and corn to make them ripe. A great many can never be made more than fresh; it is only a waste of time and money to keep them on.

I have adverted to the way cattle should be treated in winter as stores. The earlier you can put cattle upon grass so much the better. Cattle never forget an early bite of new grass. A week's new grass in Aber

deenshire at the first of the season is worth at least. two and a half upon old grass; and it is wonderful what improvement a good strawyard bullock will make in four or five weeks at the first of the season. If kept on straw and turnips alone in winter, he may add a third or at least a fourth to his live weight. But much depends on the weather. I have never known cattle

make much improvement in April, or even up to the 12th of May, because the weather is so unsteady, and the cold nights when they are exposed in the fields take off the condition the grass puts on. The grazier will find it of great advantage to house his cattle at night during this season. In Aberdeenshire, the 10th of May is about the earliest period cattle should be put to grass. Where there is new grass, first year, it is a most difficult matter to get the full advantage of it. There is no other grass to be compared with it for putting on beef in Aberdeenshire.

At the middle and end of the grazing season, old grass upon fine land may improve cattle nearly as much; but if new grass is properly shifted-take the season all through, equal quality of land, and in the same condition-no second, third year, or older grass is equal to it, or will put on the same weight of meat. It is astonishing even what poor land in new grass, if properly sown out, will do when covered with plenty of clover. Red clover is the most important for pasturing of all the grasses.

You must be careful at the first of the season, if much rain falls, not to allow the cattle to remain on the young grass. They must be shifted immediately; and no one can get the proper advantage of such grass who is deprived of the power of shifting the cattle into a park of older grass till the land again becomes firm for the cattle. I have seen a small field of new grass in the month of May or the beginning of June utterly ruined in one night, when heavily stocked with cattle. When wet and cold the cattle wander about the whole night, and in the morning the fields are little better than ploughed land. In fact, the field so injured will never recover until broken up again.

In regard to my own farms, I cut scarcely any hay. I pasture almost all my new grass, and the moment the cattle's feet begin to injure the grass, they are removed. If cattle are changed to an old grass field, so much the