420 
MISCELLANEA. 
good hair on his legs, and a right tuft at the heel. The body round 
and heavy ; the d>elly of a proportional size, neither small nor large, 
and the flank full. The back straight and broad, but not too long ; 
the loin broad, and raised a little. Hucks* visible, but not promi- 
nent, and but a short space between them and the ribs. The sides, 
from the shoulders to the hips, nearly straight. The thighs thick, 
and meeting each other so close under the tail as to leave only a 
small groove for the tail to rest on. The tail strong, stiff, heavy to 
lift, and well haired ; with a large sheath, which is always consi- 
dered to be one of the marks of a good horse. He is docile and 
tractable, without being dull and grovelling ; constant and regular 
in his motions ; powerful and steady in the draught ; remarkably 
strong in proportion to his size ; and is a horse that is certainly ca- 
pable of undergoing great fatigue.” 
Fatal Loss of Sheep from Neglect. 
In some* of the districts that lie contiguous to the Atlantic, the 
loss in full-grown sheep is not material, but in every quarter the 
loss in lambs is great beyond example. I chanced to travel over 
several of the interior districts of the Highlands in May last, at the 
very season when it is generally most delightful to journey through 
pastoral countries, while the lambs are playing in jocund groups 
and their dams feeding at ease on the still freshening sward ; but 
such a scene of woe and misery as in the woolly tribes I never wit- 
nessed, and I hope I never shall witness again. During the severe 
weather that occurred late in May, the ewes that had nursed their 
lambs carefully though with difficulty for several weeks, left them 
by scores to perish, and seemed glad to get out of their sight : 
famine overpowered the kindness of their nature — they scarcely 
uttered a bleat on leaving their helpless progeny to immediate 
death. I could not help thinking there was a kind of despair in 
their looks and motions that I had never seen before. One cold 
inclement day, in a walk through the Braes of Glenorchy, I counted 
upwards of a hundred lambs by the way, that all seemed newly 
dead, and nearly as many more that had lain quietly down to pe- 
rish without further exertion. 
In fishing along the river Lyon for about two hours one day, in 
the finest pasture glen in the Highlands, I counted sixty-three car- 
casses of old sheep, by the side of the stream, all apparently having 
died of hunger. 
Edinburgh Farmers Magazine , May 1817. 
Hips. 
