A Hill and a Half-Hill Farm. 
395 
as much. Those who want turnips have now to fall back upon 
Cumberland, as the farmers in the Scottish Border counties like 
to keep their own stock. In Dumfriesshire and Galloway the 
breadth of turnip-land steadily increases with the abolition of 
bare fallows, and the farmers are excellent customers to the 
Cheviot men for their cast ewes. The Inverness Character Mar- 
ket on the second Thursday in July is the guide to their price, 
and the buyers generally " shoot " two to the score both in ewes 
and wethers. 
Those Cheviot flockmasters who keep wethers sell them in 
their second or third year, and they mostly go off at the same 
time as the cast ewes to turnips in Cumberland or the Lothians. 
In cold wet summers they suffer a great deal, and require to be 
finished off on turnips to get them up to 18 lbs. or 19 lbs. per 
quarter for the Manchester and Liverpool markets. Many of the 
cast ewes go to England ; and last year Mr. Aitchison made 
1/. Is. 6f?. for the Penchryst lot, which always heads his price- 
book. The Penchryst and Menzion lots combined have made as 
much as 42s. to go to Yorkshire. He has generally about fifty-five 
score of cast ewes for sale, but he has sold sixty score to one 
Yorkshire salesman, whose customers take one crop of lambs 
from them by a Leicester ram. It is the Border system to sell 
the ewes at six years old, whereas in Sutherlandshire they go off 
at a year younger, and are, therefore, preferred, as they fatten 
faster when the half-bred lamb is weaned. The top ewe lambs 
are, of course, kept to supply the places of the cast ewes next 
year, and the mid ewe lambs (which, as a general thing, fetch 
more than the top wether lambs) are sold to make up the cast on 
the " half-hill farms," and breed half-breds. 
The farms, partly hill and arable, of Roxburghshire, Berwick- 
shire, Selkirkshire, and Peebleshire, are mostly farmed on what 
is termed the half-hill system. This consists in keeping Cheviot 
ewes on the hill part of the farm, and taking three or four crops 
of half-bred lambs by a Leicester tup from them. The system 
generally prevails in the districts not more than 700 feet above 
the level of the^sea, and the small half-bred ewe shots are made 
quite as good as the top Cheviot wether lambs. Those farmers 
Avho follow it regularly buy from the hill-farmers two-fifths of 
their Cheviot ewe lambs each year, in order to keep up their 
stock. It is found five miles up Teviotdale beyond Hawick, and 
extends up Kale and Bowmont Water to the foot of the Cheviots, 
all along the banks of " the shallow, brawling Tweed," Gala, and 
Leader, beyond Peebles, and nearly to Lanark. 
" Dry-grange with the milk white ewes 
'Twixt Tweed and Leader standing " 
