POCHABERS TO SITTYTON. 119 



curers from Huntly and TurrifF buy them up at that 

 weight; and although a few pigs are sent by the 

 steamer from Lossie Mouth, the majority of them 

 are cut up in quarters, and packed for London in 

 kits broad at the bottom and narrow at the top. In 

 fact, so much is sent away, that the bacon used in 

 Banffshire is generally Yorkshire-fed. 



Horse-breeding is also well looked after. We heard 

 of the chesnut presence of The General, whom we 

 last saw cantering away from a large handicap field 

 at Doncaster ; of Criffell, a bay trotter, and of a 

 three-fourths bred carriage sire. Portsoy is the cart 

 sire " Kawcliffe" of Banffshire, and Mr. Wilson's 

 great ambition is to combine the Black Comet and 

 Emulator strains. The latter was a chesnut, and he 

 and the grey Remarkable (whose powers of draught 

 in the hands of an Edinburgh contractor quite justi- 

 fied his name) were the only foals that Mr. Wil- 

 son retained when he had used a Lincolnshire 

 grey from the Ell on country to thirteen of his 

 mares. He kept Emulator till he was sixteen, and 

 Eclipse, a son of his from a pure Clydesdale mare, is 

 still in his stud. Black Comet was by Little Samp- 

 son by Sam Clark's Muckle Sampson, whom Lord 

 Kintore bought at Coldstream and named " Cold- 

 stream Lad." Mr. Wilson's show circuit takes in 

 the Royal Northern and most of the local shows in 

 the counties where his horses are stationed for the 

 season, and his grey Comet won the fifty guineas at 

 Glasgow, which was given under the condition that 



