FALKIRK TO EDINBURGH. 45 



customers in Cumberland and Dumffies-sMre ; and 

 Yorkshire has no greater buyer tha.n Jonas Walbank 

 of Keighley. In fat stock, sheep, and store cattle, 

 he does a great trade from February to June, and 

 sends them all over England. After the Falkirk 

 trysts, he takes very large supplies of cast Cheviot ewes 

 to the York market, and Berwickshire and Roxburgh- 

 shire have also a strong levy made on them for half- 

 bred ewes, which he brings down to Yorkshire and 

 the Midlands. Joseph Ruddock of Berwick not only 

 buys up stores about Durham for Falkirk, and fat 

 cattle in Roxburghshire and Berwickshire, but does 

 a very large sheep-carcase trade with London. 

 The Swans do nothing on their own account, but 

 simply as salesmen, and guarantee the money for 

 their commission. They have sold in one year as 

 many as 65,000 Scotch and English sheep, as well 

 as 12,000 Foreign ones. To this we may add 

 about 20,000 cattle, of which a fourth are foreign 

 and Iiish. At one October Falkirk they passed 

 through their hands 10,000 sheep, and 1,400 cattle. 



Despite these large supplies, farmers have of late 

 years found it so much more profitable to make their 

 corn-sacks walk to market in the shape of beef and 

 mutton, that they have often hardly known where to 

 look for store beasts. Time has, indeed, verified 

 what Mr. Aitchison of Linhope said in one of 

 those glowing periods which used to '' bring down 

 the house,^^ when he returned thanks for "The Tenant 

 Farmers'^ at the Highland Society^s banquet—- 



