S1TTYTON TO ABERDEEN. 181 



good,, and their tallow supplies are short. The Lon- 

 don butchers have been bitten once too often by 

 them. Three-fourths of the ninety were hornless 

 Aberdeenshire, and the rest blacks with white legs, 

 greys, and reds, brindles, half-bred shorthorns with 

 poll heads, blacks with the loose scur (which is the 

 saving clause of " Doddyism"), blacks with horns 

 pointing one up and the other down, and here and 

 there one with the infallible " mark of the beast" on 

 his buttock, or the real Pagan roan. 



The sample grew higher as we proceeded, and 

 reached the Christmas-table candidates for both me- 

 tropolises, and Liverpool as well. Twenty of them 

 stood in at 23 12s. 6d., twenty-eight at 25 5s., 

 and twenty at 20 10s. all from Mr. Robert 

 M'Kessack's, of Grange Green, near Torres, while a 

 smaller lot of seventeen came from Dandaleath in 

 Moray shire. On we went through the rest four 

 blacks together, and very difficult to whip apart ; 

 three " heavy Scotch greys," one of which was pretty 

 nearly the head of the lot ; and then, close by a red 

 roan with quite Marmaduke crops, stood a spotted 

 monster of full seventeen hands. Mr. M'Combie 

 drily polished off this Magog as "just a heavy beast 

 for shipping," and he was finally sold by Mr. Gibbons 

 at Liverpool for 52. " That completes the eighty/* 

 and then came another lot loose in the sheds, ready 

 to take their place in the double stalls as soon as the 

 Christmas beasts have gone. We had not time to 

 go in search of the bull Champion, as it was long past 



M 



