PERTH TO DUNKELD. 267 



kill up to SOlbs. a quarter. In the October of '63 

 they cost 36s. 6d., and left from 14s. to 18s. behind 

 them. This is very much the system of management 

 in the Strath, and those who do not depend upon the 

 Cullow wedders buy half-bred and cross-bred lambs 

 at Melrose, and send them fat to the Glasgow and 

 Edinburgh butchers as soon as they have been 

 clipped. 



Paton's gun shop is to Perth what Hugh Snowie's 

 is to Inverness quite an arsenal and lounge for 

 shooters; and evening after evening he sends oft* 

 nearly 3,000 cartridges to the moors all round. Few 

 men in the provinces make more guns and rifles ; 

 and out of his seventy last season, only one was 

 a muzzle-loader, and that was for pigeon shoot- 

 ing. Since Sir A. G. Gumming, of Altyre, brought 

 down five stags out of one herd at six shots, 

 the muzzle-loader has not been able to hold its 

 ground at all. Mr. Pat on alters them into 

 breech-loaders, without subjecting them to the 

 injurious process of bringing the barrels to a white 

 heat, and thereby injuring their temper. His plan 

 also does away with the use of the common lever 

 over the guard ; and Earl Mansfield, one of the most 

 experienced shots in the North, has been the first to 

 adopt it. Stags' heads are not so much of a Perth- 

 shire specialty; but capercailzies, cock and hen on a 

 mossy perch, and a white grouse and starling are Mr. 

 Paton's type of one kind of bird life, and a brown 

 golden eagle and a speckled fishing eagle from the 



