EARLY POLLED HERDS. 41 



same variety, but also that the former, like the latter, 

 were hornless. 



Mr Ramsay, in his ' History of the Highland and Agri- 

 cultural Society of Scotland/ published in 1879, gives an 

 extract from a communication which he had received 

 from Mr George Stodart, " lately farmer in Culter-Cullen, 

 Foveran, now (January 1879) in his 97th year, and who 

 made his first purchase of cattle in 1801." Mr Stodart, 

 who died in June 1880, says : 



" There were at the beginning of the century both polled 

 and horned cattle in Buchan, but the horned cattle were 

 mostly in the Highlands of Aberdeenshire. The horned 

 and polled were mixed in the low districts. The biggest 

 market was Aikey Fair, and there was another market, 

 Kepple Market, in New Machar. At Aikey Fair about 

 one-half were polled and one-half horned, but they were 

 all of the Aberdeenshire breed." 



Mr George Barclay, now farmer at Stocherie, and his 

 forefathers, bred Aberdeenshire cattle at Auchmill and 

 Yonderton, King -Edward, for more than two hundred 

 years, and a good many of their animals were^ polled. 

 The late Mr John Marr, Cairnbrogie, Tarves, commenced 

 to breed Buchan polled cattle early in the present century, 

 probably about 1810, or soon after. His son, Mr W. S. 

 Marr, Uppermill, one of the most extensive breeders of 

 Shorthorns in Aberdeenshire, favoured the authors with 

 a communication in reference to his father's herd. He 

 says: "My father commenced to collect them before I 

 remember I would suppose about sixty-five years ago. 

 They were not like the present polled. They had not the 

 same points, being more round in the quarter, short-legged, 

 thick, well-fleshed animals; most of them brown round 

 the muzzle, and many of them with a brown stripe down 

 the back. They were known as the Cairnbrogie breed. 

 There were several public sales of young bulls and heifers 

 at Cairnbrogie, when they realised good prices for these 



