62 FIELD AND FERN. 



been on turnips all winter 71bs. The wool varies 

 with the winter, and in very severe months it hardly 

 grows at all. 



Shepherds begin as lads of eighteen, and serve a 

 four or five years' apprenticeship, at 16 to ^25 

 wages and their keep. At the end of that time, if 

 they become master-shepherds, they have a cottage 

 and grass for two cows and a horse, and a pack of 

 eighty sheep. Sometimes they have only half-a-pack, 

 and the other moiety in wages. The pack is quite a 

 miniature flock, with a separate mark, and the cast 

 ewes go with the master's. They also get an allow- 

 ance of 62 bolls* of meal for themselves, and the same 

 for their lad where it is " a double herding," to wit, 

 1,000 sheep, "be the same more or less." Their 

 two-acre farm is generally in a course of cropping 

 for potatoes or barley, and a few turnips for the 

 broth-pot ; and a braxy victim, when it has been 

 skinned, well pressed with stones in a burn to 

 extract the inflammation, and then salted, makes 

 no contemptible hung mutton. The shepherd has 

 a hard six weeks of it, to see ftiat the ewes do not 

 wander away from the tup ; but it is nothing to 

 the lambing season, which begins about April 18th 

 and lasts for a month. Fifty ewes are generally 

 apportioned to each tup on the hill, who needs to be 

 a good traveller, and is generally preferred when 

 two years old. No one save Mr. Dudgeon, on his 

 fine seaside farm of Crakaig, tups his girnmers as 



* A boll = MOIbs. 



