244 FIELD AND FERN. 



suffer very mueli in cold weather, as they get frosted 

 to the flint (or bone in the centre of the horn), and 

 the sheep sink in condition. 



Upon the colour of the faces there has been much 

 diversity of opinion among the learned. Some of the 

 flockmasters, and the Watsons of Culterallers among 

 them, liked them very light, under the idea that it 

 indicated faster feeding and more wool. This point 

 was so steadily kept in view in choosing rams that 

 the sprittle-faced began to lose their clear white and 

 black markings, but now the dark sprittles have 

 taken the lead again, and seem generally allowed to 

 be hardier. Dark legs are an essential point, and 

 no one seems to dispute that; but how to get the 

 faces light and the legs dark is as hard as the solu- 

 tion of the riddle v/hich the late Archbishop Whate- 

 ley propounded and would never divulge : 



" When from the ark's capacious round 

 The world came forth in pairs. 

 Who was the first to hear the sound 

 Of boots upon the stairs ?" 



The great Cheviot farms are above Ewan foot 

 Station, and now there are nothing but Cheviots to 

 Muirkirk, where twenty-five years ago they were all 

 blackfaces. The Gillespies of Douglas Water began 

 the Cheviots, and they go on to Glenbuck. Seven 

 miles from Douglas, the blackfaces take it up again, 

 and spread over the hills round Carnock, Sanquhar, 

 and Kirkconnel. In Ayrshire they are chiefly black- 

 faces, but in the North the Cheviot is creeping in 

 fast. Erom Abington Station the black-face district 



