HISTORY OF THE CHEVIOT BREED 531 



and the Highland Blackface, says: "The Cheviot is by far 

 the more contented of the two on whatever kind of pasture 

 he may be put. It comes to maturity a twelvemonth at 

 least sooner, and will ever leave the Blackface far behind. A 

 very great proportion of Scotland is now exclusively employed 

 in the rearing of sheep ; and there are very few parts of the 

 South Highlands at least in which the Cheviot has not super- 

 seded, or is not rapidly superseding, the native Blackface 

 sheep. The Cheviot, however, did not always weather the 

 inclemency of a Highland winter ; and the loss of the ewes 

 and lambs almost and in some cases more than balanced 

 the advantage of finer wool and early maturity. In the 

 power of endurance there is no doubt the Blackface sheep 

 claimed a decisive victory, and on the wildest of the 

 Grampian pastures no other stock can exist but the Black- 

 face. Lord Napier testified before the House of Lords that 

 the Blackface sheep had been driven out of the whole of 

 Selkirkshire, including Ettrick Forest, and substituted by the 

 Cheviots. Patrick Sellar further records that after their intro- 

 duction into the more northern Highland counties about 1790, 

 first by Sir John Sinclair, and then by Lord Hopetoun and 

 others, a very rapid increase of Cheviot sheep took place in 

 Sutherland, between 1805 (when they numbered a few 

 hundreds) and 1820, 'which resulted in the annual extraction 

 from the Alpine plants of 20,000 carcases of mutton and 

 100,000 fleeces of wool.' They replaced the Highland 

 * kyloes.' Numerous evictions of the small farmers and 

 crofters were necessary to make room for them. Many 

 sheep were stolen and destroyed by the people, who naturally 

 had much antipathy to the land being so occupied. 



" About this time on the more sheltered grazings of the 

 Grampians, Cheviot sheep were tried and did well, because 

 they were found to pay better than the native sheep when 

 the land was adapted for them. The Blackfaces maintained 

 their ground in the West of Scotland and the Isles, and in 

 parts of the Southern mountains, and they were numerous in 

 the North." In 1812 a correspondent writes of the Tweeddale 

 district : " The rage for introducing the Cheviot breed of sheep, 

 and of course the taking of sheep farms, has greatly sub- 

 sided, partly from the low price of that kind of wool, and 

 partly from the great losses sustained by a number of sheep 



