CHAPTEE X. 



LIVE STOCK REARING IMPROVED ANIMALS CATTLE 

 DEALING AND DROVING. 



THE great cattle fair of Crieff, so flourishing in 1723, 

 like other institutions, had its time, and then ceased to 

 be what it had once been. When stricter notions began 

 to prevail regarding improved lands and rights of pro- 

 perty therein, the Highlanders could not, as hitherto, 

 get their cattle driven thither on the principle of free 

 grazing all the way from their native glens (or at any 

 rate from the point at which they came outside the 

 Highland border) and market " custom," too, had 

 begun to be exacted on the cattle offered for sale. So 

 they found it more advantageous to make their rendez- 

 vous at Falkirk ; and Crieff came to be a horse market 

 chiefly. In the latter half of the eighteenth century, 

 the Falkirk Trysts, where the southern dealers in cattle 

 met the dealers from the northward, had grown to a 

 position of great importance, owing, no doubt, to the 

 fact that the locality was at once accessible from both 

 the Highlands and the Lowlands, and convenient for the 

 dealers who bought cattle to " drove " southward. To- 

 ward the close of the century, it was estimated that 

 between 20,000 and 30,000 black cattle were offered 

 for sale at each October Tryst; and that the cattle 

 brought up to the three Trysts that occurred during the 

 year would number about 60,000. 



It was only after the eighteenth century was fully 

 half gone that any considerable trade in cattle existed 

 north of the Tay. Berwickshire, the Lothians, and 



