446 Breeds of Sheep best adapted to different Localities. 



on the bare pastures and hard stocked down lands. The natural 

 habitat of the first is on rich moist pastures, or at least such 

 pastures where, from the prevalence of moisture, a great weight of 

 herbage is thrown up, though perhaps of a coarse nature, the result 

 of which is that, a number of successive generations being thus 

 abundantly supplied with food, without having occasion to use any 

 considerable amount of exercise, the lungs decrease in size; exercise, 

 in consequence, is fatiguing to the animal, which, as soon as its im- 

 mediate wants are supplied, immediately lies down and begins to 

 ruminate. In this way, after the frame has been fully developed, 

 the greater portion of the food ingested is formed into fat and 

 muscle ; the quantity consumed in supporting the requisite animal 

 temperature being decreased to an almost minimum amount in 

 consequence of the little exercise used : in this way has the large 

 Lincoln and Teeswater breed been formed. It will easily be seen 

 that if Southdowns* were placed on the rich Lincolnshire marsh 

 lands, their naturally active disposition would lead them to expend 

 a considerable amount of force and consequently of food in exer- 

 cise. Under such circumstances the down sheep would suffer in 

 comparison with the larger animal. Under a reversed experiment, 

 namely, take a large sheep to down land, the former would be 

 starved on the short bite and dry herbage with which he would have 

 to subsist, as compared with his former more succulent marsh pas- 

 ture ; independently of which it would have to travel over a greater 

 extent of ground for its food, which, to a heavy animal requiring 

 so much larger an amount of food than the native dovvn sheep, 

 would not only retard its feeding properties, but most probably 

 would entirely put an end to them ; or perhaps a diminution of 

 flesh would take place. Now the native unimproved Cotswold, 

 and sheep of an analogous description, such as the Yorkshire, 

 Kildare, Kilkenny, and similar Irish sheep, a large sheep with 

 white faces, called mugs in the north of England, are all of a 

 hardier nature than the first described, doing well on rough, 

 cold pastures, are longer legged in proportion to the weight 

 of carcase than the former ; are more active, as they have 

 to seek their food over a greater extent of country, where the 

 herbage is of a less nutritious nature, and consequently are 

 furnished with a greater development of lungs, a circumstance 

 intimately connected with the feeding qualities of animals, as I 

 shall proceed to show when I take into consideration the dis- 

 cussion of the physiological and anatomical part of the subject. 

 Another matter of some importance in reference to the varied 

 adaptation of different breeds of sheep to different localities, irre- 



* By Southdown is here understood not prize animals, but such as actually obtain 

 their subsistence on tlie downs without any particularly extra amount of care. 



