380 THE SHEEP OF GREAT BRITAIN. 



is a marked and increasing scarcity of food) ; while on the other 

 hand, if the sheep leave the better pastures early and return 

 late, beautiful weather is often betokened, and not unfrequently 

 follows. 



After the system of wintering the breeding flocks in the low 

 country was fairly inaugurated, several of the older animals set 

 out for the wintering ground as soon as they had a scent of 

 snow in the summering regions : and in like manner, if fine 

 weather set in before the removal from the lowlands (the 1st of 

 April), shepherds often found it difficult to prevent some of the 

 animals from straying in the direction of the summer grazings. 

 A few days before lambing many of the ewes wander to distant 

 spots of the walks, and, unless carefully watched at this season, 

 considerable loss is occasioned by lambing unobserved. What 

 is very remarkable, ewes were known to have gone year after 

 year to the same locality, several miles distant from the rest of 

 the flock, to lamb. So uniformly was this system practised by 

 the older ewes in some of the less strictly watched flocks twenty 

 or thirty years ago in the hilly district, that when a certain ewe 

 happened to be missing in April or May, search was at once 

 made in the particular part of the hill where she was known to 

 have lambed before, and in almost every case with success. For 

 several years the ewes in the larger flocks have been carefully 

 herded on the lower parts of the walks until the lambing season 

 is over. 



We have known of lambs only five or six months old leaving 

 flocks or pastures which they had lately joined, and going back 

 to their native runs, a distance of several miles ; and in the case 

 of ewes newly removed from well-known to strange ground, we 

 have experienced their clandestine return to the former, a dis- 

 tance of fifty or sixty miles, in a marvellously short time, with 

 one of Scotland's noblest rivers to swim. When these animals 

 are fairly bent on returning to their favourite haunt, they travel 

 night and day, and overcome barriers which in any other cir- 

 cumstances would be insurmountable. 



No other variety of sheep shift so much for the means of sub- 

 sistence. It is consistent with our experience that the higher- 

 bred animals will do less to provide their own dietary than those 

 flocks considerably improved from the ancient type, but by no 



