44 FIELD AND FERN. 



hundred are shown at Georgemas. These are gene- 

 rally only the second-class beasts, as the best lots are 

 seldom pitched at all, but lifted at once from the 

 farms. Many of the yearlings leave little short of 

 a pound a month behind them in the scrips of the 

 higher feeders. They are taken by the dealers to 

 the Muir of Ord, and find their way from thence 

 chiefly to Morayshire, Easter Ross, and the Black 

 Isle. 



But whilst we are wandering off to Georgemas 

 in the spirit, we are really drawing near Barrogill 

 Castle, the home of the Lord-Lieutenant of tbe county. 

 A rustic cross on a mound attests the friendship of 

 the late Earl of Caithness for his relative George Can- 

 ning j and the reclaimed wastes and the new stead- 

 ing at Philips Mains prove that the present peer is no 

 laggard in his generation. His lordship is also a great 

 mechanic, and the steam-carriage which he steered 

 so deftly, with the countess by his side, from Inver- 

 ness to Barrogill, contrives " a double debt to pay," 

 and is now working as a stationary engine at the 

 stone quarry, and yet ready to take to the road 

 once more at less than an hour's notice. Art has 

 here, as in Shapinsey, triumphed over nature in the 

 matter of trees, which formed more than one of those 

 leafy alleys which we had missed so sorely for weeks ; 

 but it was not until we reached Barrock, and its 

 snug beltings of thorn, ash, and elm, where the red 

 berries of the rowan-tree are vying with the graceful 

 clusters of the laburnum, and the purple beech with 



