46 FIELD AND FEIIN. 



'^ Steam is your Highland drover" And so it was, 

 in verity, a few months since, when a dealer, finding 

 himself left short for Ellon, set off from Aberdeen on 

 a Wednesday, and returned with a large lot of Here- 

 fords from England on the Saturday. 



A Denmark beast trade is being opened up with 

 the direct steam navigation from Copenhagen to 

 Leith, and fully 5,000 " Dutchmen ^^ are passed 

 through the hands of the Swans between May and 

 October, and sold to the Forfarshire, Fife, and Lo- 

 thian farmers at £5 to .€8. They are small blacks 

 and whites, and very like the Ayrshires in size and 

 marks. The Holstein cattle, on the contrary, which 

 are poured in from Hamburg and Oldenburg are 

 not unlike the Fife breed, and of all colours, black, 

 spotted, and red and white. ]Mr. Smith, of Ley 

 Shade, near Dundee, imports about 500 or 600 of 

 them annually, and puts them into the farmers, and 

 then buys them back at a profit of from 25s. to 30s. 

 a month for a few months^ keep. The smaller 

 butchers hwj them up very readily, but the leading 

 men do not take kindly to anything but British-fed 

 beef and mutton. Still when the beasts have been 

 judiciously selected off ship-board, and fed for a time 

 in the country, they come out well, and command a 

 ready sale, as they carry both flesh and fat, and are 

 generally good killers. Between the middle of 

 March and the first of November, Hamburg ships 

 fully two thousand of these cattle, and fifteen 

 thousand sheep to Leith. Some of the cattle are 



