326 FIELD AND FERN. 



are a few West Highlanders and Ayrshires, and the 

 " Falkirks" are handy for yearling Irish stirks. 

 Cross-bred country cows are put to shorthorn bulls ; 

 but no one in the county, with the exception of the 

 Messrs. Mitchell, keeps a shorthorn herd. 



The brothers began about the time of the Chester 

 Royal, and have had Prince Arthur, Sir Colin, First 

 Fruits, and Sir Samuel on hire in succession from 

 Warlaby ; while the herds of Messrs. Gulland, Trout- 

 beck, Crawley, Steward, Jolly, Wood, Milne, Spen- 

 cer, and Towneley have furnished most of the fe- 

 males. Except at the Highland Society, the United 

 Counties of Perth, Fife, Kinross, and Clackmannan, 

 Stirling and Dunbarton, they show very seldom, but 

 invariably with success. Their farms, which lie 

 partly round Alloa, and partly on the Carse of Clack- 

 mannan and the higher land, comprise 1,200 acres ; 

 and what with his malting, farming, shipping, mill- 

 ing, and coal mine evidence, we remember Andrew, 

 the elder of the two, puzzling a House of Commons 

 committee not a little as to the exact nature of his 

 profession. 



Mistletoe is his herd matron. She cost 74 gs. at 

 the Crawley sale, and as a yearling and two-year-old 

 she won seven prizes. One of them was gained by 

 lapse at Perth, when Soldier's Bride was dis- 

 qualified, and when the " unco' wise" prophesied in 

 print of Mistletoe that she would never breed. At 

 York she was third to Queen of the Ocean, and Pride 

 of Southwicke, the first-prize Royal cows of 1862-63, 



