REPORT ON THE AGRICULTURE OF PERTHSHIRE. 181 



whether cattle or sheep, the former has been exceedingly de- 

 pressed, and the price of produce much below the average, or the 

 rates in prospect of which the land was taken, and that in the 

 latter profits have been realised far beyond the most sanguine 

 expectations. No doubt the Carse farmers have of late years 

 taken up stock-feeding more seriously, as already alluded to ; 

 but it may be doubted whether they have done it on the best 

 principles. The light-land farmers — who thirty years ago in 

 Perthshire kept little more stock than their brethren in the Carse, 

 and grew corn on still more exhausted land — began to lead the 

 way into stock-keeping. The Carse farmers, as a class, have 

 followed them, and have done what they could in growing turnips 

 for cattle ; and they have fed cattle in winter, instead of the old 

 plan of wintering old cattle very poorly. In this feeding of 

 cattle they have laboured under great disadvantages ; they had 

 to go, as formerly, to the autumn trysts, and buy lean cattle at 

 double the price their predecessors did, with a very considerable 

 risk of not getting a sound article, and of losing the whole from 

 pleura within a month or two. So great have been the losses 

 from this cause, that if the Carse farmers have not gone so deeply 

 into cattle-feeding as was desirable, they may well point to their 

 risks and losses as their justification. Another disadvantage 

 arose from this, that they bought in the cattle to eat a certain 

 quantity of turnips ; and when these turnips were eaten, accord- 

 ing to their system, the cattle must be sold ; and as all their 

 neighbours were in the same position, an excess of cattle, and 

 many of them not prime fat, were yearly thrown into the market 

 in the month of April, and prices were therefore lowered when 

 they wished to sell. The Carse farmers get the lowest price 

 for the fattened stock after having paid the highest price for 

 them when lean. They buy dear and sell cheap ; and the balance 

 of profit is often less than they would like to confess. This year an 

 ox of forty-five stones was in July worth L.3 more than one of the 

 same weight was two months previously. Scarcely any of the 

 Carse farmers have ever thought that it would pay them to keep 

 these cattle on by small potatoes, cake, or such means, till the 

 cutting grass came, about the 20th of May, and so have them 

 good fat at mid-summer, although by these means they might 

 have done so. The misfortune has been that the Carse farmers 

 have been forced into a new business when they undertook 

 stock-keeping, — into a business, in its details of buying, feeding, 

 and selling, much more difficult to be learned than grain-grow- 

 ing, and not to be learned to any perfection by every man. The 

 Carse, with a permanent reduction on the value of its staple crop — 

 wheat, offered little inducement for men, who thoroughly under- 

 stood stock, to come into a district supposed not to be suited for 

 cattle, and to set a better example, which they could only do by 



