534 SHEEP MOUNTAIN AND MOORLAND 



than 7 Ibs. or 8 Ibs. per quarter, but in every essential 

 quality, except the fineness of the wool, they were far inferior 

 to the Blackface." 



The exceptional fineness of the wool, which weighed less 

 than 2 Ibs. each, was recorded as far back as 1460, when, 

 or soon after, the breed "prevailed in Annandale, Nithsdale, 

 and Galloway. It lingered longest in some of the moun- 

 tainous parts of Aberdeen," and was known in Fifeshire into 

 the nineteenth century. 



Youatt suggests, in accordance with tradition, that the 

 Blackface breed is of foreign origin, and that it was taken 

 to a Royal farm in the forest of Ettrick by one of the 

 Scottish kings (James IV., who married the daughter of 

 Henry VII. of England); but Lowe (edited) favoured the 

 more probable view that it " found its way into Scotland 

 from the mountains of the North of England. It has been, 

 for an unknown period, in all the high lands of the counties 

 of Dumfries, Berwick, Roxburgh, Selkirk, Peebles, Lanark, and 

 adjoining districts. Its introduction into Argyllshire and the 

 Central and Northern Highlands, has been of very recent 

 origin, or about the middle of the eighteenth century, when 

 sheep began to supersede the herds of black cattle, and by 

 degrees it also displaced the aboriginal Tanfaced and the Four- 

 horned breeds of the Western Islands. [Coleman says it did 

 so in a great measure by absorbing them through crossing, and 

 that the hardiness and extraordinary activity of the Blackface 

 ewe from the North of Scotland was largely due to the presence 

 of the Tanface breed.] It resembles the Persian sheep in 

 some respects, but the essential characteristics are no doubt 

 the result of natural development under the conditions of 

 soil and climate in which it has existed for hundreds of 

 years. Horns are occasionally absent in the females." [A 

 peculiarity which the Author remembers having seen on the 

 farm of Blair, Ayrshire, soon after 1870, and which probably 

 originated from the hornless Tanfaced connection.] " The fur 

 is shaggy and the wool coarse, in which respect it differs 

 from that of all the other mountain breeds of the country. 

 It is of medium length, and weighs about 3 Ibs. the fleece, 

 when washed. Although wild and independent in its habits, 

 it is not so restless as the mountain sheep of Wales. The 

 weight of the four-year-old wether is 60 Ibs. The mutton 



