CHAPTER XY. 



WEST HIGHLAND CATTLE. 



By JOHN ROBEETSON, Blair Athole, N.B. 



HE breeding and rearing of cattle have in recent 

 times become subjects of special importance. The 

 increase of the population, the wonderful prosperity 

 in trade, and the consequent high rate of wages 

 which prevailed for some time prior to 1874, combined to 

 promote the consumption of animal food among the working 

 classes to a very high degree, while the home supply did not at 

 all increase in proportion ; and, concurrently with these causes, 

 the fall in the price of grain, consequent on foreign competition, 

 forced the British farmer to abandon tillage to a great extent, 

 and to take to the production of animal food, in the hope of 

 coping successfully with the foreign producer. This hope was 

 realised for a time, but for the last few years the importation of 

 cattle and sheep — dead and alive — from America, Australia, 

 and New Zealand has seriously handicapped the British farmer 

 in this department of his calling also, and it therefore becomes 

 a matter of vital importance to him to produce the best descrip- 

 tion of animal food at the least possible cost. 



Notwithstanding the sad depression in trade all over the 

 country for the last ten years, the habits of good living, bene- 

 ficially contracted by the working classes during their previous 

 great prosperity, still prevail, as far as means will allow, and, 

 fortunately for the consumers, the supplies of cheap foreign 

 meat bring animal food still within the easy reach of working 

 men. But the quality of imported dead meat cannot compare 

 with home beef or mutton, and the consequence is that, although 



