128 FIELD AND FERN. 



this fertile land from '^ the chafings and tumblings 

 of the big, blue German Ocean/^ 



Mr. Douglas occupies a farm of three hundred 

 acres at Athelstaneford, belonging to Sir David Kin- 

 loch ; and he also holds Muirhouses, of two hundred 

 and fifty acres, under Earl of Wemyss, about a mile 

 and a-half from it. The pure-bred short-horns were 

 kept entirely at Athelstaneford, where Mr. Douglas 

 resides, and the store-cattle at Muirhouses. The 

 whole is principally dry-field land, with, in some 

 places, a large admixture of clay ; and, with the ex- 

 ception of six acres, there is no old grass. The sys- 

 tem is the six-break one : about seventy to eighty 

 acres are annually sown in turnips, and from eight 

 to ten in mangels, of which, in his prize -cattle days, 

 he preferred the orange globe variety. 



There is much to remind one of the old love. The 

 heads of Sir James the Rose and Rose of Summer are 

 sculptured on the garden vases, among some scores of 

 other roses of every kind and hue, and they live again 

 from the head to the hocks in painted glass windows. 

 Still, botany has quite supplanted bull-calves, and 

 useful farm buildings with a clock replace those 

 ancient tenements and the rocky fastness from which 

 Sir James the Rose used to sally. 



Lalla Rookh's, Ringlet's, and Rose of Summer's are 

 the only heads preserved. Lallans wore the rosette 

 at the Highland and the Yorkshire shows ; but she 

 was jammed against a wall by a cart, and died after 

 breeding one calf. " The Rose'^ is also in a picture 



