364 FIELD AND FERN. 



Moffat Water was once a great foxhold^ and on 

 regular field days the shepherds turn out with car- 

 bines. Once thirty-two couple of Mr. Murray of 

 Broughton^s hounds were over the scaur_, and only one 

 was killed ; and a farmer spoke of it to us as his 

 special crown of rejoicing that he was held over 

 that scaur by his heels to keep him steady^ and pelted 

 the fox off his half-way house ledge at last. 



Moffat Water and Whamphray Water are both 

 crossed ; and the steep brow near the little church 

 of Whamphray, with the pillar which speaks to the 

 memory of Carruthers of Kirkhill, is scaled at last, 

 and we are once more back at The Shaw. It had its 

 small pack of harriers in the late Mr. Graham^s time, 

 but his son has no divided love except between Gallo- 

 ways and half-bred lambs. The house lies on a little 

 eminence on the high road from Lockerby to Lang- 

 holm, and the waters of the Caudle burn and the 

 Dryfe flow down the pleasant glade. 



Mr. Graham^s Galloway herd is never large, as he 

 sells both bulls and females; and his principal strains 

 are from the Blind Bull (brother to Black Jock and 

 Moss Trooper), who was bred by the late George 

 Graham of Riggfoot, and was first at Edinburgh in 

 ^48. The present bull is from Mr. Halliday^s of 

 Molock. His Cheviot ewes, whose cast is replaced 

 annually Avith second ewe lambs from the adjacent 

 fiockmasters, are put to Leicester tups, either of his 

 own breeding, Mr. Bell Irving^s of Whitehill, or 

 Yorkshire ones at a pinch, and the top lambs go off 



