Sutherland Reclamation. 
445 
ewes were at once all sent back to the hills ; the Master of 
Blantvre's flock alone excepted. Unfortunately, although it was 
late in the spring, a very severe storm set in soon after they were 
turned out, and great numbers of them, already weakened by 
their previous hardships, quickly succumbed. 
There has always been much difference of opinion on the 
■question of box-feeding sheep in winter ; but it is clear that, 
unless it is continued until the natural food of the sheep can be 
obtained in sufficient quantity, any loss that ensues must be 
attributed not to the adoption but to the too early abandonment 
of the artificial feeding. In the few cases where other foods than 
bay were given, different combinations were adopted of maize, 
oats, bran, lentils, and decorticated cotton-cake. By continuing 
the box-feeding the Master of Blantyre not only escaped the com- 
mon fate of " manv skins " at the end of the winter, but obtained 
at speening time the unusually high average, for a highland 
flock, of 92 per cent, of lambs. To meet the difficulties of 
wintering, some of the tenants advised that the stock of sheep 
kept upon each farm should be permanently diminished ; it is 
not often, however, that such a winter as the last is experienced, 
and it would be sounder policy to strengthen the weak link in 
the chain by incurring occasionally the exceptional expense of 
winter feeding at a loss, rather than lose every year a great part 
of the summer keep through understocking it. The fall of 
lambs this spring has been even worse than that of the calami- 
tous season of 1877. 
It is at a time like this that attention is called most urgently 
to those radical defects of management that are surely, though 
slowly, operating for the impoverishment of the county. Alen 
who have long enjoyed the easy reception of what nature, 
unaided, could give them, must now bestir themselves to dis- 
charge the full duties of their position, or must give place to 
other men with more of that enterprise and energy that distin- 
guish the Duke. 
Under the present system, it is doubtful whether the intro- 
<luction of the Highland Railway is of any benefit to the county 
at all, so far as the sheep-farms are concerned. The tenants 
have used it freely for sending away their wool and for sending 
a larger proportion than before of their sheep to be wintered 
away from home, but thev have hardlv used it at all for bring-ins 
in those artificial foods and manures that serve to maintain and 
increase the fertility of other parts of the kingdom. With a 
climate milder than the great feeding county of Aberdeen, there 
seems no reason why the opening up of the county by rail 
should not enable some portion of its stock to be fattened at home. 
In the spring of 1877 numbers of lambs were allowed to die for 
VOL. XV. — S. S. 2 G 
