Report on some features of Scottish Agriculture. 219 
picture of ' The Cattle-fair,' were selected from a lot which 
Mr. Mitchell took to Falkirk tryst about the year 1854. The 
particular beasts were selected by the lady-painter herself on 
artistic grounds, and regardless of the prosaic protests of the 
breeder, who considered them anything but favourable repre- 
sentatives of his Highland herd. 
Labour. 
Only one man and a youth are regularly employed as farm- 
labourers on the cultivated land. The former is paid 25Z. per 
annum and his food, and the latter 15?. per annum and food. 
Occasionally men are employed at daily wages, viz., 12s. per 
week and food during the winter, and 15s. per week and food 
during the summer : they pay for their own washing, and sleep 
in a bothy. Married shepherds get 17Z. per annum, 6 J bolls of 
oatmeal, keep for two cows, with permission to have a calf with 
each until it is 12 months old, and a croft comprising ground 
enough for planting potatoes sufficient for the family. Unmarried 
shepherds of the district get 25/. per annum and board in the 
bothy, but Mr. Mitchell does not employ them. Occasionally, 
however, a young man boards with a shepherd, who receives for 
his keep 6J bolls of meal, a cow, and potato-ground. Women 
are employed during haymaking and harvest, for hoeing turnips 
and on other lighter occupations. They get Is. 6f/. per diem 
and have their meals in the house-kitchen, as also do the farm 
labourers. Breakfast, at 7 o'clock in the morning, consists of 
oatmeal porridge and sweet milk, and oatcake and sweet milk 
afterwards. Dinner is ready at 12, and consists of broth or soup, 
butcher's meat, potatoes, bread, and sweet milk. Supper time is 
7 o'clock, and the meal consists of oatmeal porridge and sweet 
milk. For six months in the year the labourers are allowed fresh 
mutton for dinner, and during winter they get salt meat instead. 
The hours of labour are from 6 till 6, an hour being allowed for 
breakfast and dinner. 
The wages of farm-servants have doubled since Mr. Mitchell 
commenced farming, in 1827, when his first ploughman received 
11/. per annum. 
Piecework is not much in vogue ; but sometimes oats are har- 
vested at 14s. per acre, including cutting, sheafing, and stooking. 
Formerly the price was not more than 10s. per acre, but the 
scarcity of labour in the Highlands has raised the price of all 
agricultural fieldwork. Turnips are generally thinned by hand, 
before being hoed, at a cost of 2d. per 100 lineal yards ; but 
hoeing and other such work is done by women and by the yearly 
labourers kept on the farm. 
