SHEEP FARMING IN SUTHERLANDSHIRE. igi 



collies. The whole surroundings are changed, and the dialect 

 in which the master talks to his herd is almost unintelligible to 

 a southern ear. 



" The traveller who crosses the mountains to the north-west 

 coast from Kildonan," says Mr. James Macdonald, " enters 

 the Sutherland portion of the parish of Reay. The principal 

 holding in this district is the fine farm of Bighouse, extending 

 to about 60,000 acres, and rented at ^"1,262 by Mr. Robert 

 Paterson, of Biithwood, Biggar, Lanarkshire." This farm is 

 about double the size of the small county of Clackmannan, and 

 a great deal larger than Kinross. If Rutland were so divided 

 there would be room for one and a-half such farm. The rent 

 amounts to fivepence per acre, over all. Along the banks of 

 the river and burns there is a good deal of green land, but the 

 greater part is black and mossy. Rhifail extends to about 

 30,000 acres, and is rented at about ^"900 a year, or sevenpence 

 per acre, and consists of mixed hill pasture. Ribigill, the 

 largest farm in the parish. of Tongue, and one of the best 

 managed in the county, is 30,000 acres in extent, and is rented 

 at ^"1,465 a year, or at about one shilling per acre. Melness, 

 the largest farm in the county, and probably in the kingdom, 

 is 70,000 acres in extent, and is rented at ^"1,257 P er annum, 

 or a little over fourpence per acre. The entire stocks of the 

 districts are of Cheviot sheep, and have been so for more than 

 half a century, and during all this time the change in the 

 system of management has been so slight as scarcely to be 

 worthy of notice. The pastoral farms of the county carry 

 what are known as " ewes and wether " flocks, that is, self- 

 supporting flocks that throw into the market every year a crop 

 of cast ewes and of three-year-old wethers. These ewes and 

 wethers are delivered to the buyers direct from the hills, about 

 September ist. Sutherland is a breeding and rearing, and not 

 a feeding county. Mr. Macdonald tells us that the best idea 

 of the details of management in Sutherland may be obtained 

 by taking the case of a tenant entering a farm at Whitsuntide, 

 the usual time of entry, and by following him through his first 



