ALTERATIONS PRODUCED BY CLIMATE. 



77 



called, and thinks it is owing as much to the pasture, 

 which is well adapted for giving* these animals a soft 

 and useful fur, though not suited, like New South 

 Wales, for the growth of the finest wool, and that the 

 colony might turn this to great advantage. In cold 

 regions the hairy covering is more developed and fully 

 coarser, but always mingled with a proportion of hard 

 rousfh wool. The influence of climate on portions of 

 the fleece and skin is well illustrated by circumstances 

 which have occurred in Galloway, even within the 

 limits of our traditionary writings.* The native sheep 

 of the Highlands of that district is supposed to have 

 been a small, handsome, white-faced breed ; at least 

 so thinks John MacLellan, who wrote an account of 

 Galloway in 1650, from the wool being much praised, 

 and eagerly bought up by merchants, which would 

 not have been the case if taken from the black-faced 

 animal ; yet how happens it that at present the native 

 breed exists only in the lower parts of Kirkcudbright- 

 shire, the high country exhibiting black-faced sheep, 

 which, after every trial, have been found best adapted 

 to the climate, and pasture of the moors and High- 

 lands ; while Chalmers owns that it has not been as- 

 certained when or whence this hardy breed were brought 

 to their present locality ? Why, it is tolerably plain, 

 that though the white-faced sheep might be placed 

 there originally, yet they would speedily lose every 

 trace of their origin, and become black-faced when 

 placed on a hilly country, and subjected to the slow 

 but certain influence of peculiar food and climate. 



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Chalmers' Caledonia — Ai tide, Galloway. 



