70 Notes and Sketches. . 



continued far into the season, it was not always that the 

 farmer could bring his whole stock to the grass in life, 

 through lack of nutritive provender. And even when 

 spring had fully come, the pasture on the cultivated 

 land, furnished by the growth of indigenous grasses, 

 was wretchedly poor. In the Cromar and some other 

 districts of Aberdeen shire, the practice was to send the 

 larger cattle away about the end of May to graze in the 

 Highland glens at many miles distance, and they were 

 brought home again about the end of August. The 

 cost of grazing was 2s. or 3s. a-head for the summer. 

 In the pastoral region of Cabrach, in Banffshire and 

 Aberdeenshire, where the tenants traded in cattle as 

 they could, they bought in sheep in early spring, and 

 cattle a little later, to graze ; and sold them off again 

 about August. The cost of grazing black cattle about 

 1790 was 2s. a-head on hill pasture, and 5s. a-head on 

 " infield " grass for the summer ; not high rates ; but 

 then at three years of age and upward these same cattle 

 ranged only from 3 to 7 a-head in value. 



About 1750, when ten or twelve oxen were univer- 

 sally used in each plough in Aberdeenshire, " the 

 greater part of the draught oxen came from the 

 Lothians." Twenty years later they came from Fife- 

 shire, but not in so great proportion ; and the number 

 reared by farmers themselves gradually increased till the 

 disastrous year 1782, which, if it ruined many farmers, 

 had also the effect of stimulating those who escaped 

 ruin in the direction of improved modes. After that date, 

 turnip cultivation, as already indicated, became more 

 general ; the plough teams were curtailed, and the oxen 

 that composed them were almost exclusively reared at 

 home. It is curious, however, to note the enormous 

 proportion which the work oxen bore to other stock, so 

 late as the date of the Old Statistical Eeport even. 

 Thus, one minister of an Aberdeenshire parish, who had 

 been at the trouble to take the bovine statistics of his 

 diocese, as indeed a good many others did, informs us 



