78 FIELD AND FERN. 



and flower- vase all correct, and several women and 

 children as audience, asked touchingly for our custom, 

 and demonstrated how beautifully he could focus us 

 at any distance, by backing recklessly with his 

 camera into a field of oats. There was hardly a rip- 

 ple in the harbour of refuge, and the hot haze which 

 was driving both dogs and grouse to the water 

 springs almost hid the Souters of Cromarty which 

 guard the entrance of the Firth. Then leaving 

 the fish triangles at the cottage-doors for a season, 

 we strike rather more inland, and the drowsy hum of 

 the reaping machines mark the farm of Teaninich, 

 on which Mr. Tew, the Shorthorn M'Combie of 

 Boss-shire, breeds and feeds his heavy weight cham- 

 pions. Florist came here for a season from Major 

 Wardlaw, but he left very few calves behind him, and 

 was succeeded by Goldseeker (19866), bred by Mr. 

 Wilson, of Brawith. The roan Negotiator, who 

 strains back to Mr. Tanqueray's blood, was the sire 

 of Mr. Tew's best bullocks, which are principally out 

 of shorthorns purchased from Mr. Mitchell of How- 

 gill Castle, in Westmoreland. To make l a month 

 from the birth to the block is his aim ; and for his 

 thirty months' pair of prize bullocks in '62 he 

 achieved it exactly without any very extra keep. His 

 two pairs of yearling bullocks, which beat Ross- 

 shire the following year, were sent to Inverness, 

 and stood first and second at the show in '64. The 

 second pair were sold there for 32 each, and left a 

 clear butchers' profit of S on the biggest ; and the 



