382 THE SHEEP OF GREAT BRITAIN. 



Rams are required at the rate of one to forty ewes. During 

 the rutting season the tups often fight terrifically, not unfre- 

 quently killing each other ; and that their heads can stand such 

 fearful crashing is a marvel. A black-faced ram is extremely 

 powerful, especially with his head. Going backwards for twenty 

 or thirty yards each, a pair of Highland rams then start, and 

 meet each other with a fearful violence, their heavy arched 

 horns cracking loudly, and their hind quarters rising consider- 

 ably in response to the collision of heads. The lambing 

 season is usually from the middle of April till a similar period 

 in May. Twin lambs are the exception. The lamb is remark- 

 able for the amount of cold and hunger, especially the former, 

 it will endure, even in the first few days of its existence, and also 

 for the early use of its feet. Two or three minutes after birth it 

 will be on its feet, though rather tremulously, and a few minutes 

 more it walks easily. The defensive-like attitude with which it 

 weathers the biting blasts of the spring snow and other storms 

 affords early evidence of the natural hardiness of the breed. The 

 ewe's care over her young is great. With moderate treatment 

 as to food before lambing the ewe is invariably possessed of a 

 large quantity of milk, and it is only in cases of desperation as 

 to nourishment, as a rule, that they will leave their lambs. Such 

 is the attachment generally of a Highland ewe to her offspring, 

 that we have seen many of them remain within a few yards of 

 their dead lambs for several days, even though the latter had not 

 survived birth, and though the former were on the brink of 

 starvation. 



Attended, as the conversion of smaller holdings into large ones 

 was, by much heart-burning to the evicted, and pointed to as it 

 still is by not a few as one of the worst steps ever taken for the 

 country, it must be admitted that it conduced to the introduc- 

 tion of a much improved class of sheep. It was the larger flock- 

 owners, as a rule, who were the first to bestir themselves in pro- 

 ducing finer stock. The mountain sheep farming may be said 

 to have assumed three different characters in the course of the 

 last thirty years, viz., the purely breeding stocks in the southern 

 counties of Scotland, the wether stocks in the northern counties, 

 and the mixed ewe and wether flocks in the central and northern 

 counties. 



