362 
Polled Aberdeen and Angus Cattle. 
a mixture of skimmed milk and boiled turnips ; her secret of 
getting the calves to take to it kindly being to put some of the 
boiled turnips in the very first milk that was given to the calf. 
If the calf had ever tasted pure milk, it would have been very 
difficult to have induced it to drink the mixture. As far as is 
known to the writer, no stock but Polled Angus was at Kinnaird 
till about 1834, when one or two Ayrshire cows and an Ayrshire 
bull were got. The best of the Angus cows were then sent to 
the neighbouring bulls, there being polled stock at that time at 
every one of the adjacent farms. The Ayrshire bull was dis- 
continued in 1840, but some Ayrshire cows continued to be 
kept till 1849 ; and the writer remembers some excellent stock 
got by a polled bull from these remaining Ayrshires. They 
were generally black and polled, and some of them might 
have been taken for pure Angus. At the time of the writer'^ 
earliest personal recollection of the herd there were about 
seven pure Angus cows at Kinnaird, besides the cows belonging- 
to the servants, all of which were polled. The prevailing colour 
of the Kinnaird herd, as of all the cattle in the country, was 
black, but there was hardly any herd which had not a brindled 
cow in it, and in many a dun or a grey. Those of the latter 
colour were called droners, and were supposed to have had a 
strain of Dutch blood in them, by descent from some cows 
brought over by a Dutch Company that attempted to reclaim 
the basin of Montrose. The oldest and most important tribe 
in the herd was the " Lady Anne " tribe. The cow, " Old Lady 
Anne " (743), was a very old cow at the time of the writer's 
earliest recollection, and she must have been calved about 1820, 
certainly not later than 1822. I believe, therefore, that " Old 
Lady Anne " (743) is the oldest cow recorded in vol. i. of the 
' Polled Herd-book.' " Old Lady Anne " and all her descendants, 
even to the present, were, and are, excellent milkers. They had 
the especial property of continuing to give a large quantity of 
milk till close on the time that they were due to calve ; and, if 
allowed, many of them would have continued to give milk 
without any break at all. The old cattleman at Kinnaird used 
to say that he believed from one end of the year to the other 
" Old Lady Anne " and her descendants gave more milk than 
any of the Ayrshires, although they might not give so much just 
after calving. 
The destruction of that fine herd at Kinnaird was a serious 
loss to the interests of the breed. Fortunately, however, we 
have some of the best strains it possessed preserved and well 
represented in various herds. The " Old Lady Anne " family 
is represented by three strains — one through " Flora of Port- 
lethen " (244), one through " Formosa " (186), and another 
