“The oatmeal is usually cooked in one way, as brose.  A pot of water is put on the fire to boil—­a task which the men (in the bothy) take in turns; a handful or two of oatmeal is taken out of the small chest with which each man provides himself, and put into a wooden bowl, which also is the ploughman’s property; and, on a hollow being made in the meal, and sprinkled with salt, the boiling-water is poured over the meal, and the mixture receiving a little stirring with a horn-spoon, and the allowance of milk poured over it, the brose is ready to be eaten; and, as every man makes his own brose, and knows his own appetite, he makes just as much as he can consume.” [2]

[Footnote 2:  “The fare is simple, and is as simply made, but it must be wholesome, and capable of supplying the loss of substance occasioned by hard labour; for I believe that no class of men can endure more bodily fatigue for ten hours every day, than those ploughmen of Scotland who subsist on this brose three times a-day.”—­Vol. ii. p. 384.]

But if the life of the ploughman is familiar to our author, the work he has to do, and the mode of doing it well, and the reason why it should be done one way here, and another way there, are no less so.  The uninitiated have no idea of the complicated patterns which the ploughman works, according to the nature of the soil and the season of the year in which he labours.  He may be “gathering up—­crown-and-furrow ploughing—­casting, or yoking, or coupling ridges—­casting ridges with gore furrows—­cleaving down ridges with or without gore furrows—­ploughing two-out-and-two-in—­ploughing in breaks—­cross-furrowing—­angle-ploughing, ribbing, and drilling—­or he may be preparing the land by feering or striking the ridges.”—­ (Vol. i. p. 464.) All these methods of turning up the land are described and illustrated by wood-cuts, and we are sure quite as effectually done upon paper as if the author had been explaining them upon his own farm, guiding one of his own best ploughs, and strengthened by a basin of good brose made from his own meal-chest.

But the practical skill of Mr. Stephens is not confined to the lower walks of the agricultural life.  The ploughman sometimes qualifies himself to become a steward, that he may rid himself of the drudgery of working horses.  He has then new duties to perform, which are thus generally described.

“The duty of the steward or grieve, as he is called in some parts of Scotland, and bailiff in England, consists in receiving general instructions from his master, the farmer, which he sees executed by the people under his charge.  He exercises a direct control over the ploughmen and field-workers....  It is his duty to enforce the commands of his master, and to check every deviation from rectitude he may observe in the servants against his interests.  It is not generally understood that he has control over the shepherd, the hedger, or the cattleman, who