20 AGRICULTURE. 



are all Norfolks when they get to Smithfield market. The 

 proceedings are as orderly, and the dealings on as large a 

 scale, as those of the preceding day. A few small lots of 

 a score each may be found, but generally they run from 50 

 to 300 and upward?. A purchaser of less than the whole 

 of one of these large lots gets his number, not by a selection, 

 but by a cut : a drover passes through the black mass, and 

 cuts off by estimation the number ; they are then counted 

 and made up to the required figure by alternate selections 

 on the part of the buyer and seller. A third day follows, 

 but it is not of much account. The cattle are for the most 

 part miscellaneous lots, and what a Scotchman calls his 

 shots, and an Englishman his culls. We have been some- 

 what minute in describing these proceedings, because they 

 are on a scale of magnitude quite unknown to Southern 

 agriculturists. We can assure our readers that the men 

 who carry them on are quite equal to the occasion. We 

 always considered our annual intercourse with them to be 

 both a privilege and a pleasure. No trading class can fur- 

 nish more intelligent men than the Scotch stock-farmers, 

 perhaps, indeed, than the Scotch agriculturists generally ; 

 men well educated, of courteous and simple manners, of 

 great intelligence and much general information, enter- 

 prising, and keenly alive to every reported improvement. 

 We never could associate with them without drawing rather 

 disagreeable comparisons. Many of these men are originally 

 and still from the Cheviot district of the border ; several of 

 them hold stock farms in districts separated by hundreds 

 of miles from each other, besides a more agricultural farm 

 on which they reside. Their system must be excellent, for 

 they only see their mountain farms a very few times in the 

 year. Others hold only one farm and reside on it ; and of 

 these, some on the west coast of Sutherland have long been 

 the resident gentry and quasi lairds of the district, though 

 holding under their great superior, the duke of that ilk. 

 Till the very recent introduction of roads and inns, their 

 houses were the only refuge of the traveller from the 



