222 FIELD AND FERN. 



less, and with Smithfield, where she was first in her 

 class, as her future portion ; but we had to look 

 afield for Clio by Windsor and Clarissa by Don 

 Rhoderick, which were first and second in the 

 younger class at Kelso, and kept their relative places 

 at Stirling, where a Montbletton heifer beat them 

 both. Clio would be an excuse, if there had been 

 no Quadroona, for liking the Windsor heifers. 



There were racks for thirty- six in the byre, where 

 Old Violet stood fallow at last in her sixteenth year. 

 She has been one of "the Kinnaird milkers," up 

 to her twelve quarts at a meal, and in regular de- 

 scent from Old Bell and Lady Anne. Windsor 

 was looking wistfully out towards the pastures in one 

 of those ten cow and calf boxes with yards, at the 

 south end of the building, which are all furnished 

 with double sliding doors. His fine quarters make 

 you forget his roughish shoulders, and as he stood 

 foreshortened in his yard, with a field of golden 

 barley beyond, and the Castle pinnacles rising 

 through the trees above it, we thought we had never 

 seen a more beautiful picture to hand. 



The vast Forfarshire woodlands were wont to be 

 full of foxes, which have suffered in their time quite 

 as much from politics as from hounds. Two-thirds 

 of the three thousand acres in the great common 

 forest of Montreathmont or Mountroman Moor be- 

 long to Lord Southesk. In some parts it is fully 

 two miles across, and is principally planted with 

 Scotch fir and larch but the rough heather bottom 



