526 SHEEP MOUNTAIN AND MOORLAND 



effectively the undercoat, and wards off the wet and the 

 snows of winter. Sports now and then appear, having 

 reverted to some ancestral type with a more fawn - like 

 appearance, altogether on finer lines, and with rather longer 

 and more slender legs, and a longer tail, dun or light brown 

 all over, but for white under the tail and a dark brown 

 line along the back to the ears. 1 (See Appendix R.) 



MOUNTAIN BREEDS 



The Cheviot is named from the range of rounded or cone- 

 shaped green hills, growing a superior quality of pasture, on 

 the Scotch and English Border. " Cheviots are now mostly 

 bred in Roxburgh, Dumfriesshire, Peebles, Sutherland, and 

 Northumberland." The low price of wool and the rage for 

 young mutton greatly reduced the number of Cheviot wethers, 

 at one time kept till they were three or even four years old. 

 The lambs are now sold to low-country graziers, and mostly 

 fed-off within a year at weights not far short of the hill-fed 

 wethers of the past. The ewes are kept on the lower and 

 less exposed green hills. Cheviot wethers and Blackface 

 Highland ewes go to greater heights, or occupy positions on 

 the black or more heathery land at lower elevations. The 

 great fairs or marts where the surplus of draft stock is sold 

 are held at Inverness in July ; at Rothbury, Hawick, and 

 Lockerbie, in August, for lambs ; and in October for ewes and 

 wethers, of which a great number are also sold at Carlisle and 

 Perth. The principal sale of tups is held at Hawick towards 

 the end of September, but there are also sales at Edinburgh, 

 Muir of Ord, Lockerbie, etc. 



The Cheviot breed has been for many years a successful 

 medium for the improvement of the Welsh mountain sheep, 

 and it maintains an excellent reputation in England, where 

 large numbers of cast ewes are taken annually to cross with 

 the various Down and Long-wool rams, to produce feeding 

 hoggets, which are in high favour in the fat market. No 

 sheep thrives better on the plains of the Canadian North- 

 West, and, being hardier than any of our low country Long- 

 wool or Down breeds, it has a hopeful future in other foreign 

 parts, when quality versus quantity of mutton, and the cost of 



1 Indebtedness is acknowledged to Miss Elizabeth Taylor for the 

 foregoing information and for lending the Plate originals. 



