SHEEP: BREEDS AND MANAGEMENT. 



CHAPTER XX. 

 SHEEP FARMING IN SUTHERLANDSHIRE. 



I HAVE so frequently had occasion to speak of the manage- 

 ment of sheep on the enclosed grounds of the English shires 

 that it is now necessary to turn our attention for a short time 

 to the comparatively wild life of the Highlands of Scotland. 

 The ordinary notion of sheep-farming in England is naturally 

 limited to holdings of moderate size. Five hundred acres 

 is a fair-sized farm, and a thousand acres strike us as large. 

 Ewes, with corresponding numbers of lambs and tegs, care- 

 ful attention, regular turniping, and allowances of cake and 

 corn are associated with arable farming, and especially with 

 barley-growing. Such intensive farming supplies plenty of 

 food for remark and discussion. The " management " is con- 

 stantly varying and very complicated, the changes of food 

 frequent and elaborate, the expenses per acre, or per head, 

 heavy. All this is entirely different on a Highland sheep- 

 walk, and we may almost say that the picture is the reverse of 

 what we often see around us. The term extensive is more appro- 

 priate. It is not a question of how many sheep to the acre, 

 but how many acres to the sheep. We deal not with hundreds, 

 but with thousands of acres ; not with rounded chalk hills or 

 wolds of oolite, but with lofty mountains, whose tops rake the 

 clouds and bring down their treasures in torrents ; snow-capped 

 peaks and distant blue vistas of rugged scenery ; such pictures 

 .as Landseer loved to paint, with the stag and the deer-stalker 

 in the fore-ground, or the tartan-clad shepherd with his faithful 



