10 NOTES ON FIELDS AND CATTLE. 



spring. Such keep on the lowlands is, in fact, clover 

 to those whose early years have been spent by the 

 peat moss, with an allowance in winter of what is 

 really little else than dried rushes. On corn, cake, 

 roots, and hay, put not one of these wild-born ones, 

 unless of evenest temper and of fine quality. On 

 such food, nothing will pay so badly as an inferior 

 Scot, who is always pining to be free. Some of all 

 sorts you may buy at Barnet fair, from the choice 

 sleek polled black steer (averaging Si.), which may 

 be seen cropping the overgrowth of the royal pad- 

 docks at Hampton, to a rough, wild, shaggy stamp, 

 a herd of which is imported annually, and does 

 well on a tract of wet, coarse, exposed parkland 

 not far from here, where the snipe breeds in 

 summer, and you may be bogged in no time, and 

 which it makes one shudder to ride across in 

 winter. 



On a limited extent of pasture-ground small cows 

 pay capitally, when a larger sort would shrink to 

 nothing. A herd of stunted Ayrshire, or Ayrshire 

 crossed with the Alderney bull, will give an abund- 

 ance of rich milk on very scanty keep. I had one, 

 bought for 131. in the market just three weeks after 

 calving, that gave us nine pounds of butter a week 

 in January, besides a great quantity of milk, on hay 

 and swedes alone. Corn and oilcake would, of course, 

 have helped to a much higher point. Her yield 

 lasted, if allowed, to within a fortnight of calving. 

 She took to kicking, and I was obliged to sell her. 

 She subsequently fattened fast and admirably, being 

 the " prettiest beast," the farmer said, he ever had ; 



