126 FIELD AND FERN. 



was with the dairy lot. This good heifer was highly 

 commeuded at Newcastle, and third at Stirling, where 

 she, at all events, beat all the Scottish lot ; and a 

 double cross of her Lady Blanche blood had told 

 well on British Standard. 



There are from 100 to 120 Leicester ewes, and 80 

 half-breds in the home flock. The former are princi- 

 pally bred from Cockburn of Sisterpath, Hardy of 

 Harrietfield, and Simson of CourthiJl : and some of 

 their own prize tups have been used as well. We 

 found them in a glen of old grass of thirty years' 

 standing, which has made many a shorthorn man's 

 mouth water with honest envy. The Wbittingham 

 burn flows along it, among the elm and beechen 

 shade for miles. Still, we hardly took in its real 

 beauty till we had scaled the ruined tower of 

 the old Wbittingham Castle, and looked away to 

 the vast arables, which no longer keep their 

 "fallow sabbaths^' round Traprain and Berwick 

 Law. 



Below were the Wbittingham gardens, rich in the 

 rarest trees, the dark shade of BothwelFs yew, with a 

 still darker story annexed, and the grove in which 

 a solitary monument stands to record that it was 

 once the burial-ground of the Drumelzier family. 

 Tlie laurel and the bay wear the glossy sheen, which 

 the red sandstone fosters, and which no frost can 

 blight ; and beyond, towards the Lammermoors, and 

 towering above still lochs which we wot not of, are 

 the oaks and larches on the hill which make up the 



