100 Transactions. 
alone are seen. Cheviot sheep are giving way, and blackfaced 
prevailing. Instead of vehicles going to market at neighbouring 
villages, cadgers’ carts come to the farm houses. Since the new 
Ground Game Act rabbits are scarce, and hares are nearly 
extirpated. The squirrels are fitful visitors. A great wave of 
them appears ; then, as at present, there is an ebb. ‘The curious 
flat stones which roofed the houses have disappeared in favour of 
slates. The number of inhabited houses has decreased, and their 
ruins are not always picturesque. Tinkers with their donkeys do 
not now visit us. Umbrella-menders, knife-grinders, and sellers 
with baskets are scarce, but tramps asking alms have noways 
decreased. The river Shinnel runs as of yore, arched over for 
many miles with a beautiful canopy of natural wood. Although 
illegitimate methods of securing trouts, with which it was well 
stocked, have been put down, yet the system of deep-draining, 
suddenly flushing the water and carrying away the spawning 
beds, is an angler’s complaint. The heritors having mansions in 
the parish are not now resident. They spend only a few summer 
months with us, or let their houses, so the work of smith, coach- 
man, and domestic servants is far less in demand. On the other 
hand, houses that have been built or repaired since I came to the 
parish are much more comfortable to the inmates. 
When I arrived in Tynron, and for years afterwards, water 
was obtained almost universally from open wells ; chimneys were 
swept by setting fire to them ; messages were conveyed across 
straths by shrilly whistling on fingers ; towns were reached by 
bridle paths. These mountain tracts were used for sheep 
conducted to the great stock markets, as Sanquhar, and not 
being much employed for this purpose now are falling into decay. 
The people around me to a greater extent than at present knitted 
their own stockings, plaited their own creels, carved their own 
crooks, made their own curling brooms or cows, bored their own 
tod-and-lamb boards, squared their own draught-boards. A 
very few women smoked tobacco like men, and a very many men 
had chins like women. Broom was boiled, the juice mixed with 
hellebore and tobacco, and used as a sheep-dip. The sheep, in 
fact, were not dipped at all, but their wool was combed into 
ridges, and the composition carefully poured in the skin from an 
old teapot. There were no wooden frames for bees; only the 
cosy-looking straw skeps. ‘The Shinnel drove several mill wheels ; 
now it drives only one. There was a method of announcing the 
