76 FIELD AND FERN. 



land ponies, a stirk or two, and a dozen hens verging 

 on the Dorking, which is supreme in these parts, 

 make up the stock-in-trade of the conventional five- 

 acre holding. 



The cultivated parts of Wester Ross have much 

 more pasture land, strong and light intermixed, than 

 Easter lloss, which rejoices in far richer wheat and 

 turnip soils. It is very handy for the glens, where 

 the wedder hoggs return in April, and perhaps sup- 

 plies more turnips for them than any other district in 

 the North. Its beech hedges and pine woods give 

 it a more cozy look, but still the heavy green and 

 white crops and the engine-house chimney tower- 

 ing above the steadings very much recall the high 

 farming and well-to-doism of East Lothian. Caithness 

 beasts are the farmers' delight. They generally buy 

 the Georgemas yearling stots and queys at The Muir, 

 where their fine scale contrasts strangely with their 

 future companions, the Ross- shire second-class West 

 Highlanders, which are bred by small tenants on the 

 mountains. The light-land farmer carries them on 

 till they are two-year-olds, and then they are finished 

 off on the strong clays. There are no dairy 

 farms in Ross-shire, as the farmers prefer suckling 

 their calves on the Caithness system, and consider 

 early beef maturity a higher aim than butter, cream, 

 and cheese. The Hillhead herd gave shorthorns a 

 great fillip, but the pure sires have to meet a very 

 varied class of dams. Ayrshires are few ; Devons 

 and Herefords have hardly been seen in the county ; 



