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characteristics of a good store beast. It is only practice and a natural gift that can enable any one to master the subject. There are a few rules, however, that the buyer of store cattle should be acquainted with. He ought to know how they have been kept for the previous six months, otherwise their keep may be entirely thrown away. I make it an almost universal rule (and I have never departed from the rule except with a loss), that I will graze no cattle except those that have been kept in the open strawyard, and have been fed exclusively on turnips and straw. If you can get them off yellow turnips it will be decidedly to your advantage. I have seen this proved by dividing twenty beasts, and keeping one half on yellow turnips, and one half on swedes, both lots getting full turnips. Those on the swedes shot far ahead in the strawyard of those upon the yellows. When taken. up from grass, however, the cattle fed upon the yellows were equal to those fed on the swedes. They were grazed together. The difference of improvement in different lots of cattle must have often struck every observer.

I am well acquainted with the different strawyards in Morayshire, and know how the cattle are kept, and how they thrive. There are some farms on which they thrive better than others, even when their keep is in other respects the same. There are farms in Morayshire which are not breeding farms, and where the young stock does not thrive, and the calves have to be sold, and even old cattle only thrive for a certain length of time. Some farms are apt to produce cancer on the throat and side of the head. I pay little attention to this, as change of air cures the complaint. For the first two or three weeks after

a beast is attacked with this disease, it will go back in condition; but I have seldom seen much loss by it. If in warm weather, the beast may have to be taken up to avoid the flies; if the disease is inside the throat, it may interfere with the breathing, and the animal may have to be killed. I bought from the late Mr David Sheriffs, Barnyards of Beauly, in spring, ten Highlanders, every one of which had cancer in different stages. I grazed them until October, when the cancers had all disppeared, and the beasts did well (for Highlanders) at grass.

If you put upon grass cattle which have been fed through the winter upon cake, corn, brewers' wash, grains, or potatoes, and kept in hot byres or close strawyards, and look to them to pay a rent, you will find that they will soon make a poor man of you. This mode of feeding is unnatural. Before the animals begin to improve, three months will have passed. If half-fat cattle are bought, which have been kept close in byres or strawyards, and put to grass in April or the first two weeks of May, and cold stormy weather sets in, with no covering to defend them, they will fall off so much that the purchaser will scarcely believe they are the beasts he bought. Thus he not only loses all his grass, but the beasts will be lighter at the end of three months than when they were put into the field. Let me not, however, be misunderstood. I do not mean to say that a few weeks of a little cake or corn will ruin a beast for grazing; but you may depend upon it, that the less artificial food given during winter the better. When kept upon the food I have specified for months and months, they are perfectly unfit for grazing. I regard cake as the safest substitute for turnips; and corn, potatoes, brewers' wash, and

grain, as the worst. bullock that has never been forced, and has never tasted cake, corn, or potatoes. The store cattle I winter for grazing are all kept in open strawyards, with a sufficient covering for bad weather, and as dry a bed as the quantity of straw will permit. This is indispensable for the thriving of the cattle. They receive as many turnips as they can eat. Beasts must always be kept progressing; if they are not, they will never pay. My store cattle never see cake, corn, or potatoes. I would rather throw potatoes to the dunghill than give them to a store bullock, though I would give them to my fatting bullocks.* If I can get the bullocks for grazing that I want, I will not lose one mouthful of grass upon them. They will not go on, however, without proper care and superintendence. It requires a practised eye. If a grazier has a number of fields and many cattle, to carry out the treatment of his cattle properly, shifting and fresh grass once in ten or fourteen days should, if possible, be adopted. This has always been my practice. In one day I have observed a marked difference in the improvement of animals after the shift.

But my ambition is to graze a

The grazier must always consider the quality of

* As to giving potatoes to store cattle, since writing the above, I wish to modify the opinion I have expressed to a certain extent. I had a conversation with Mr Hope on the subject, and he states that his belief is, that potatoes are not prejudicial to the growth of store cattle when put to grass, and that his practice is to give them potatoes. I will admit that a few potatoes may not do a store beast much harm; but in my experience in Aberdeenshire I have found that in cattle which have been fed with potatoes the black colour changes to a dusty brown; they are also bad thrivers. A beast that sports that colour is never doing well. I shall, however, prosecute the inquiry.

his grass-land, and buy cattle adapted for it. would be very bad policy to buy fine cattle for poor or middling lands. You must always keep in view how the cattle have been kept. If they have been kept improperly for your purpose, their size, whether large or small, will not save you from loss. If the cattle are kept on cake, corn, potatoes, or brewers' wash or grain, during the previous winter, it will be ruin to the grazier. Let it not be supposed, however, that I recommend buying lean, half-starved beasts. What I wish to impress on you is, that you must keep the cattle always full of flesh; and, as a breeder, you must be careful not to lose the calf flesh. If you do so by starving the animal at any time of his growth, you lose the cream-the covering of flesh so much prized by all our best retail butchers. Where do all the scraggy, bad-fleshed beasts come from that we see daily in our fat markets, and what is the cause of their scragginess? It is because they have been stinted and starved at some period of their growth. If the calf flesh is once lost, it can never be regained. A great deal of tallow may be got internally by high feeding, but the animal can never again be made one that will be prized by the great retail butcher. Our Aberdeen

working bullocks carry little good meat. Draught as well as starvation takes off the flesh. They are generally only fit for ship beef.

Let me now offer a few observations as to the breeds of cattle best adapted for paying a rent-the great object of our cattle rearing and feeding. I have grazed the pure Aberdeen and Angus, the Aberdeen and North-country crosses, the Highland, the Galloways, and what is termed in Angus the South-country cattle, the Dutch, and the Jutland.

Except the two latter, all the others have got a fair trial. I am aware that the merits of the pure Aberdeen and Angus form a difficult and delicate subject to deal with. I know that the breeders of Shorthorns will scrutinise my statements carefully. But my only object is to lay down my own experience, and I trust that I have divested myself of prejudice as much as possible. If store cattle of the Aberdeen and Angus breed out of our best herds can be secured, I believe no other breed of cattle will pay the grazier more money in the north for the same value of keep. But there is a race of starved vermin which is known by some in the north by the name of "Highland hummlies," which I consider the worst of all breeds. No keep will move them much. At the top of these I must place those with the brown ridge along the back. They can be made older, but it takes more ability than I ever had to make them much bigger. Keep is entirely thrown away upon such animals. As regards good Aberdeen or North-country crosses, they are rent-payers. He would be very prejudiced indeed who would not acknowledge their merits. I graze more cross-bred cattle than pure-bred polled. The Highlanders on our land are not profitable; they are of such a restless disposition that they are unsuitable for stall-feeding, however well they are adapted for grazing purposes in certain localities and under certain conditions. But, I repeat, for stall-feeding they are unsuitable; confinement is unnatural to their disposition. The last Highlanders I attempted to feed were bought at a cheap time. In the month of June they were most beautiful animals, and they grazed fairly. I tied them up; but they broke loose again and again, and ran three miles off to the glen where they had been

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