206 Report on some features of Scottish Agriculture. 
Many of the best of these beasts had been bred by Mr, M'Combie 
himself, and, in April, were worth, he considered, from 28/. to 
30/. each. The remainder had been bought the previous winter 
and in the spring, and had cost from 25/, all the way up to 32/. 
per head. 
All these cattle had been selected as better adapted -for the 
earlier than the later markets ; but we now come to the description 
of those which take the places of the 125 whose treatment has 
just been sketched. These were still in the fields; they had cost 
from 20/. to 24/. each in the spring, and would be all tied up 
immediately after the first sixty had been disposed of, getting 
turnips and straw as the others. They would go off gradually 
during the months of January, February, and March. The 
stalls vacated by the Christmas beasts are filled up by half-fed 
beasts, bought in the neighbourhood, and either finished for the 
London market the same spring or kept on for the grass and 
sold the following autumn or winter. For the latter purpose a 
bullock that has not been too well kept, especially if from the 
high grounds, well-bred, and not stunted in growth, will pay for 
its keep far better than one than one that has been kept on the 
higher priced lands in the valleys.* 
* The following extracts from Mr. M'Combie's work, entitled '.Cattle and 
Cattle Breeders' (pp. '21-29), contain some additional information on certain 
features of his system : — 
" The earlier you can put cattle upon grass, so much the better. Cattle never 
forget an early bite of new grass. A week's new grass in Aberdeenshire at the 
first of the season is worth at least two and a half upon old grass ; and it is 
wonderful what improvement a good strawyard bullock will make in four or five 
weeks at the first of the season. If kept on straw and turnips alone in winter, 
he may add a third, or at least a fourth, to his live weight. But much depends 
on the weather. I have never known cattle make much improvement in April, 
or even up to the 12th of May, because the weather is so unsteady, and the cold 
nights when they are exposed in the fields take off the condition the grass puts on. 
The grazier will find it of great advantage to house his cattle at night during 
this season. In Aberdeenshire, the 10th of May is about the earliest period 
cattle should be put to grass. Where there is new grass, fiist year, it is a most 
difficult matter to get the full advantage of it. There is no other grass to be 
compared with it for putting on beef in Aberdeenshire. You must be careful 
at the first of the season, if much rain falls, not to allow the cattle to remain 
on the young grass. They must be shifted immediately ; and no one can get the 
proper advantage of such grass who is deprived of the power of shifting the 
cattle into a park of older grass till the land again becomes firm for the cattle. 
I have seen a small field of new grass utterly ruined in one night (in the mouth 
of May or the beginning of June) when heavily stocked with cattle. When wet 
and cold, the cattle wander about the whole night, and in the morning the fields 
are little better than ploughed land. In fact, the field so injured will never 
recover until broken up again. In regard to my own farms, I cut scarcely any 
hay. I pasture almost all my new grass ; and the moment the cattle's feet being 
to injure the grass, they are removed. If cattle are changed to an old grass field, 
so much the better; but they will be safe on second or third year's grass, pro- 
vided the land is naturally dry. By the 1st of July, the new grass land gets 
consolidated, and you are safe. New grass fields are bad to manage in another 
