SITTYTON TO ABERDEEN. 153 



mon, and Shorthorn-West Highland is as much liked 

 as long as it is kept to the first cross, which will 

 make its 24 easily at two years old. 



Black has always been the fashionable ' f doddy " 

 colour ; but brindles, duns, yellows, and greys were 

 once very prevalent, in Aberdeen shire. The yellows 

 especially had a character for early maturity, which 

 was not shared by the brown-back and brown-mouth 

 sort. Many of them had white horns with black 

 points, and as wide-spreading as a West Highlander, 

 In fact, a horned Aberdeenshire was quite as highly 

 thought of as a black poll, and the Huntly and 

 Strathbogie districts were their especial strongholds. 

 Northamptonshire and Leicestershire men were very- 

 fond of them, and some of the leading Cumberland 

 jobbers would occasionally carry away as many as 

 120 in one lot from the Falkirk October, and winter 

 them in their yards till spring. They were then 

 passed on to Barnet fair, and sold fat out of the 

 Essex marshes in July, August, and September. Old 

 graziers shake their heads mournfully, and say that 

 no such beasts browse the marshes now. Thirty 

 years ago the trade was at its height, and so were the 

 Millers, Billy Brown of Carlisle, Jemmy Reay, and 

 the Temple Sowerby men. The brothers Armstrong, 

 as oral history avers, have been known to go back to 

 Yorkshire from the fairs North of Aberdeen with 

 600 horned and polled runts, none of them less 

 than three, and generally four years old. Gradually 

 the lots became half horned and half polled ; and 



