224 FIELD AND FERN. 



sportsman, and has Lad harriers for more than forty 

 seasons. Fitchit has long been his trusty aide-de- 

 camp in stable, field, and kennel, and they are not 

 severed on Mr. Gourlay SteelFs canvas. 



Tom JRintoul always speaks of Kirrenmir as " a 

 rough place," from the fact of his having been nearly 

 mobbed one night as he was bringing the hounds 

 through it during a weavers' riot. The shuttle 

 goes flashing through the loom with a sound which 

 seems very foreign to an ear which has been accus- 

 tomed for weeks to nothing but the bleating of flocks 

 and the lowing of herds ; but it is worth climbing 

 up that weary hill towards Cortachy, if only to see 

 the panorama of the Vale of Strathmore. We were 

 too early for Cullow, where the blackfaced wedders 

 the gatherings of the glens and the Grampians from 

 Glenshee to Glenesk are mustered seven to ten 

 thousand strong about the 18th of October. Bal- 

 later and Brsemar furnish many of the wedders, and 

 if they are not sold at Castleton fair, they come on 

 here as " Grampian sheep." Four-fifths of the whole 

 are really Lanark lambs, which are bigger and better 

 bred than the mountaineers. The predominance of 

 them makes this the best blackfaced wedder fair in 

 Scotland ; factors buy them up as twos and threes 

 chiefly to stock the policies ; and Mr. Geekie, sen., will 

 occasionally take as many as fifty score for Earl 

 Mansfield's home farm at Scone. A great many go 

 into Forfarshire and Perthshire, and some few into 

 Fife. Last year the top price was 40s., which is the 



