Breeds of Sheep best adapted to different Localities. 439 



enclosed lands in the vicinity of the homestead, for the purpose of 

 salving or smearing, an operation to be noticed hereafter. A 

 large number are also retained there until the commencement of 

 the succeeding spring ; to such, in severe weather, a little hay is 

 given in addition to their ordinary pasture. The practice of 

 drawing turnips, and distributing them to these sheep on their 

 winter pastures, is also much increasing; the introduction of 

 turnips amongst the dale lands of the mountainous districts has 

 enabled farmers to maintain 50 per cent, more stock during the 

 winter months than they were formerly capable of doing; the 

 ewes are excellent mothers, with an abundance of milk ; the 

 lambs are weaned about three months after being dropped. 

 These sheep are again collected in the vales about the latter end 

 of June or beginning of July, for the purpose of being shorn, 

 prior to which they receive a thorough washing in some adjacent 

 stream. It has been doubted by some whether the black-faced 

 sheep, which now graze the greater portion of the wildest 

 mountains of England and Scotland, are those which have 

 immemorially inhabited those districts; for Cully, on 'Live 

 Stock,' observes that the dun-faced sheep were the early inhabit- 

 ants of these mountain ranges ; which sheep he describes as 

 being sometimes to be seen, and as — 



" having faces of a dun or tawny colour ; the wool is fine and mixed and 

 streaked with different colours." " They are polled, small in size, 

 weighing at four or live years old not more than 7 or 8 lbs. a quarter, 

 the flesh being of excellent flavour. They are hardy and require little 

 trouble ; but in every essential quality, except the fineness of the wool, 

 they were far inferior to the black- faced." 



Dr. Anderson also shows that a breed of sheep that produced a 

 finer description of wool than the black-faced sheep now yield 

 was once common in districts of Scotland where the black-faced 

 sheep only are now to be found. It prevailed in Annandale, 

 Nithsdale, and Galloway ; it lingered longest in some of the 

 mountainous parts of Aberdeen. It was known not fifty years 

 ago in Fifeshire. Hector Boethius, who wrote about the year 

 1460, takes notice of the fineness of the wool produced in various 

 parts of Scotland. Speaking of the sheep in the vale of Esk, 

 and where of late, until the introduction of the Cheviots the 

 rough- woolled black- faced sheep alone were found, he says, accord- 

 ing to Hollinshed, " Whose sheep have such white, fine, and 

 excellent wool, as the like of it is hardly to be found again in 

 the whole island." Sebastian Munster, in his ' Cosmographia 

 Universalis,' published ninety years afterwards, says, in each 

 country (speaking of the borders of England and Scotland) is 

 such that nowhere is there better or finer wool. 



Having made these incidental remarks, I shall proceed to the 



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