SITTYTON TO ABERDEEN. 155 



Except on a Friday, it is rather difficult to find 

 any of the leading Aberdeen butchers at home. They 

 are always scouring one of the three beef counties 

 Banffshire, Morayshire, and Aberdeenshire to look 

 after their beasts in training, or to buy for their shop 

 and the cattle or dead-meat train. The Crimean 

 contracts gave a great spur to the thing in Aberdeen. 

 Forty or fifty extra bullocks were killed every day 

 for the army, and men who went into the carcase 

 business have never left it since. The dead-meat is 

 rather superseding the live-stock trade with the 

 South. Butchers not only send them up cheaper 

 this way, but the hide and tallow are worth quite as 

 much at Aberdeen. Dundee buys the heads and 

 feet, and the tongues, livers, and hearts never go 

 begging at home. In fact, more beasts are slaugh- 

 tered weekly in Aberdeen than in Glasgow. The 

 butchers kill two and three year old bullocks, queys, 

 barren cows, &c., and dispatch the heaviest supplies 

 from Christmas till the middle of May. In the height 

 of the season the Messrs. Martin will slaughter as many 

 as one hundred sheep and forty beasts, and send very 

 little of it away. Mr. Stewart has also more of a home 

 trade ; while Messrs. Butler, Knowles, Skinner, and 

 White send off large live and dead-beef supplies, but 

 comparatively few sheep carcases. The dead -meat 

 train goes at 'three o'clock, morning and evening, 

 during the season, and the cattle train at one p.m. on. 

 Thursdays ; and the live stock are pretty equally 

 divided between the steamer and the railway. The 



