FORRES TO FOCHABERS. 99 



breed. Sometimes they buy them with delivery by 

 rail from 5 7s. 6d. to 7 in October, and finish 

 them off on cake and swedes to the figure of 14 in 

 April. The home-bred calves are generally weaned 

 for harvest time with drumhead cabbage and cake, 

 and so on by degrees through a course of white 

 globes to swedes, with a pound of cake daily till 

 the grass is ready. Most farmers bring up calves 

 by the pail, and consider that they do better in 

 winter than those which have been suckled. Man- 

 gels have been all but a failure in Moray shire, and 

 the swedes have been so sure, and advanced so 

 steadily into favour that they now constitute nearly 

 four-fifths of the root crop. Dissolved bones, guano, 

 nitrate of soda, and superphosphate spend another 

 rent in many parts of the county. The lands 

 are top-dressed in March, and the grass is ready 

 for the scythe in May, and twice again during the 

 summer; but the turnips get the greater part of 

 this outlay. 



The direct Highland Railway has not only had 

 the effect except during a snow-storm, when a 

 train was once buried up to the funnel of curing 

 the truly sublime indifference to time which pre- 

 vails among the Highlanders, but of opening the 

 London live and dead market in thirty-six hours 

 and 55 minutes according to the hand-bills. If 

 Aberdeenshire loads its dead-meat train with beef, 

 Morayshire does a good part by mutton as well. 

 We have heard of one great dealer and butcher in 



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