IX 



AGRICULTURALLY, Aberdeen is by far the largest 

 county of Scotland ; it possesses 628,000 acres under 

 cultivation, of which about 95 per cent, come under 

 the plough and only 5 per cent, lie in permanent grass. 

 Nor is quality lacking in the farming ; every one has 

 heard of the Aberdeen-Angus black cattle, but it is 

 perhaps not so generally known that the most famous 

 Shorthorn herds of recent years have also their home in 

 Aberdeen. Aberdeenshire farmers are further renowned 

 as graziers, for some of the finest examples of what the 

 Londoner knows as " Scotch beef" come from this 

 county. The agricultural area forms a broad fringe 

 between the coast and the mountains, which in the 

 north of the county lie 30 miles or so back from the 

 sea. A line drawn north by a little west from Aber- 

 deen takes one into the thick of the farming, and there 

 one finds an open rolling country, rounded by glacia- 

 tion and divided into large fields by stone walls. In 

 the bright air of an early September morning the 

 smooth wide sweeps of the land, the absence of hedges, 

 and the black belts of trees which sharply outlined 

 every rise above a certain elevation, gave the landscape 

 a characteristic note of its own, more akin to Northern 

 Germany than to any other part of the United 



