A General Description of the East Coast of Scotland; From Edinburgh to Cullen. Including a Brief Account of the Universities of Saint Andrews and Ab

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1782. Excerpt: ... Aberdeen coopers, in faking it for exportation. The farmers and millers, in this, and the more northerly counties, commonly rear, each of them, one, or more hogs, and always finifh off their fattening with corn. They are bought up by the Aberdeen butchers, from the middle of December to the firft of April, but chiefly in the fore end of the feafon, and in fo large quantities, that pork is fometimes fold, in bulk, at a penny halfpenny farthing the pound, Dutch weight; though of late years, from the great demand, it has been generally dearer. Several reafons may be affigned, for the fuperior quality of the Aberdeen pork; the hogs are, in the fummer time, fed with grafs, in winter with the refufe of ground corn; and, as has already been obferved, finifhed off with hard grain. The meat of them therefore muft be firmer, and have a finer relifh, than the meat of thofe haftily fed about diftilleries, and common breweries, and blown up with grains and warn. They are killed at a proper age, from fifteen to eighteen months old, and are of a ftrong hardy breed, and a middling fize. They weigh from fixt.y pounds Dutch, to a hundred and fifty, or two hundred. None under fixty pounds weight are permitted to be falted for exportation; and few are flaughtered earlier than the firft week of January, by which time they have had fufficient leifure to gather up the loft corn in the fields. Were pork as generally eaten in the north, as it is in fome other parts of the ifland, the people of Aberdeen would not export one barrel, where they now export twenty. But here the common people, and even fome of the better fort, have an averGon to that food, from a long indulged prejudice again ft it, for which I have heard two reafons affigned: the irreat can-1 not be good which was not ..