WEST HIGHLAND CATTLE. 179 



for winter keep was unmethodical and precarious, and the 

 frequent result was that a severe winter, or, still worse, a severe 

 spring, cut off by sheer starvation a large proportion of the 

 stock. The only compensating consideration was that at that 

 time the stock did not represent much money, and that the rent 

 was not difficult to pay, being partly in kind (i.e., in stock) and 

 partly in labour, as well as in money. It is not over a hundred 

 and twenty years since a grazier in the district of Eannoch, 

 in Perthshire, not reckoned at the time by any means a wealthy 

 man, lost from starvation in one spring a hundred and twenty 

 head of cattle. Now, however, the system of management — if 

 system the old practice could be called — is entirely changed. 

 In many parts of the Highlands, especially in the north and 

 west, sheep farming on a large scale, chiefly conducted by men 

 of capital from the south of Scotland, has entirely superseded 

 the cattle -rearing practice of former times ; and, indeed, over 

 the whole Highlands sheep have now for at least sixty or seventy 

 years very much displaced cattle on hill pastures. Whether this 

 sweeping change has been physically beneficial appears now to 

 be doubtful, for grazings which were fifty years ago notably 

 healthy for sheep have now in many districts become very much 

 the reverse, and many shrewd observers attribute this unhealthi- 

 ness in a great measure to the exclusion of native cattle from 

 the rougher and ranker pasturage of the lower grounds, 

 especially of woodlands and marshy lands, which pasturage is 

 very suitable in summer for Highland cattle, but very injurious 

 to sheep in the end of the year when they descend to the lower 

 grounds. This, among other influences, points to a return, in 

 some degree, to a more mixed system of grazing than has for 

 some time prevailed, and no breed of cattle is so well adapted to 

 this mode of farming as the native Highland breed. 



Over a great part of the mainland and islands of the counties 

 of Argyll and Inverness, in the north-west of Perthshire, and in 

 the highlands of Dumbartonshire, Highland cattle are extensively 

 bred and reared on the lower lands, generally with marked 

 improvement and success, and in many instances to great perfec- 

 tion ; and there is every reason to believe that in the extensive 

 districts named this breed of cattle is the most profitable to 

 cultivate, because from its hardy character it will thrive both in 



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