. . . almost scared out of his life, and ruefully limps back to his mistress. He will not be in a hurry to molest sheep again. Now all this took place while we were standing some two hundred yards away, and in what unknown language the message was conveyed to the responsible sheep-dog remains to me a mystery.
Usually there are in the flock from four to five hundred animals. Most of them belong to an old cross-breed, the parents being respectively Highland and Leicester. They have spotted legs and speckled faces. Their prominent lumpy foreheads are devoid of tufts and their black noses are queerly rounded. The explanation of the tendency to spottedness is that the dams, which belonged to a horned mountain breed, were black-faced. The rams however were Leicesters, broadly built, fine-woolled animals, and since they were hornless, some of the progeny are horned and some polled. Among the flock were some of the “white-faced breed,” square and well-balanced, a cross between “Cheeviots” and Leesters. The males alone of the Cheviot breed bear horns, and this only occasionally, hence the blended strain commonly lacks these growths.
The six weeks drought of 1919 burnt up the grass until the Common looked as it had been scorched with a flat iron. “There will be stingy fare for the sheep this summer,” I said, as I drew attention to the tall coarse tufts of purple moor grass (Molinia), and remarked that the sheep do not seem to care for it. He replied that sheep do eat it, more in Scotland than in England, and . . .