and the auctioneer’s hammer falls quick and often, averaging about a minute and a half to each lot.  Thus the forty lots of young bulls from six to ten months old are passed away, averaging from 33 to 44 guineas each.  Besides these, from fifty to sixty young bulls, cows and heifers are disposed of by private sale during the season, ranging from 50 to 150 guineas, going to buyers from all parts of the world.

It is Mr. Cruickshank’s well-matured opinion, resulting from long experience and observation, that there is no breed of cattle so easily maintained in good condition as the Shorthorns.  His are fed on pasture grass from the 1st of May to the middle of October, lying in the open field night and day.  In the winter they are fed entirely on oat-straw and turnips.  Not a handful of hay or of meal is given them.  The calves are allowed to suck their dams at pleasure.  He is convinced that with this simple system of feeding, together with the bracing air of Aberdeenshire, he has obtained a tribe of animals of hardy and robust constitutions, of early maturity, well calculated to improve the general stock of the country.

It was to me a delight to see this, the greatest herd of Shorthorns in the world, numbering animals of apparently the highest perfection to which they could attain under human treatment.  What a court and coterie of “princes,” “dukes,” “knights” and “ladies” those stables contained—­creatures that would not have dishonored higher names by wearing them!  I was pleased to find that Republics and their less pretentious titles were not excluded from the goodly fellowship of this short-horned aristocracy.  There was one grand and noble bull called “President Lincoln,” not only, I fancy, out of respect to “Honest Old Abe,” but also in reference to the disposition and capacities of the animal.  Truly, if let loose in some of our New England fields, he would prove himself a tremendous “railsplitter.”

After spending a quiet Sabbath with this old friend and host at his farm-house at Sittyton, I took the train for Edinburgh and had a week of the liveliest enjoyment in that city, attending the meetings of the Social Science Congress.  There I saw and heard for the first time the venerable Lord Brougham, also men and women of less reputation, but of equal heart and will to serve their kind and country.  I had intended to make a separate chapter on these meetings and another on the re-unions of the British Association at Newcastle-upon-Tyne, but the space to which this volume must be limited precludes any notice of these most interesting and important gatherings.  Stopping at different points on the way, I reached London about the middle of October, having occupied just four months in my northern tour; bringing back a heartful of sunny memories of what I had seen and enjoyed.