A Hill and a Half-Hill Farm. 
391 
two years for wool, and a year longer for stock. Farms were let 
on the faith of high prices, at 10s. %d. per ewe, and those who 
took them did so when sheep and wool were more than twice as 
valuable as they have been since. Last year, when keep was 
so short, the best lambs went to the butcher-market, as there was 
nothing for them to eat at home, and they could not have been 
converted into cash in any other way. Besides the drought diffi- 
culty, there was an extra number of lambs ready for sale in 
August ; and, as quality and quantity generally go together 
in lambs, they " died well." In fact, there were hardly any 
deficiencies, whereas in such years as 1816, 1837, and 1860, 
fully two-thirds of the usual number were wanting. 
The losses among Cheviot sheep have been fearful in some 
seasons. In 1772 more than half of the sheep in Scotland died, 
and in the January of 1794, at the time of the Goniel Blast, 
many a farm lost its shepherd. Twelve lay dead at one time 
within a short distance of Moffatt. One flockmaster lost seventy 
score of ewes, and the mouth of the Solway Firth was almost 
dammed up with carcasses. Mountain hay was hardly introduced 
before 1799, and then it did not come into general use. Hence 
the black frosts of 1816 and 1837 made dreadful havoc, and in 
1860 farmers could hardly keep life in their flocks at all. 
The snow began on October 21, and the winter could not be said 
to terminate until early in May. If the science of the flock- 
inasters had not been greatly in advance of what it was in 1772, 
scarcely a sheep would have been left on the Cheviots. It is not, 
however, the hay of one season that will give a quantity sufficient 
to meet such a season as that of 1860 ; and the shepherd cannot 
be too urgent about making it whenever the sun shines. The 
greater part of it is from the drained enclosures, but still a fair 
quantity can be won from among the feet of the sheep. A score 
of sheep, fed on hay alone in a hard time, cannot do with less 
than \^ stone, of 22 lbs. to the stone, per day. When there was 
no mountain-hay at hand, a great deal of Dutch was used, but it 
was sadly deficient both in weight and quality. The Border 
men had great facilities for getting rye-grass hay (which might 
be sold by the farm covenants) from Cumberland, but the cartage 
of it on to the hills was very difficult, and it rose from Is. per 
Cumberland stone of 14 lbs.,* to 2s. in snowy weather. 
There is no point of management that the older flockmasters 
insist so much upon as a good supply of mountain hay. In a 
paper which Mr. Aitchison read a few years ago before the 
Teviotdale Farmers' Club, of which he is president, he observed : 
*' Sheep make up nearly half the rental of Scotland, and yet land- 
* The Roxburghshire stone is 22 lbs., and the Dumfriesshire stone 24 lbs. 
VOL. V. — S. S. 2d 
