RADNOR, CLUN FOREST, AND EXMOOR BREEDS 567 



weight to 28 Ibs. per quarter. The wether mutton is sold in 

 the " West End " as Welsh, dressed with a tuft of wool on the 

 tail, which is left its full length on account of the breed being 

 semi-mountainous. 



The Exmoor Horn Sheep l has existed from time imme- 

 morial on the Exmoor and Brendon Hills in West Somerset 

 and North Devon. Charles Vancouver, in a Report on the 

 Agriculture of Devon, 1 808, states that 



" The common Exmoor sheep are generally preferred in 

 the open and more exposed parts of Exmoor, owing to their 

 extraordinary hardiness, and the activity with which they 

 continue working in search of food. The wethers at two-and- 

 a-half or three years old make delicious mutton, weighing 

 from 12 to 15 Ibs. per quarter, and commonly shear a fleece 

 of from 4 to 5j Ibs. of unwashed, moderately long, staple wool 

 (value, Qd. per Ib. against washed wool about I3d.), which, 

 before the cloth manufactures fled from this part of the 

 country into Yorkshire, was much used by them. The wool 

 of the third-cross with the merino was three times the value 

 of the native fleece, and the carcase is stated to have been 

 rather improved." 



Professor W. C. S. Spooner writes in 1844, "that the 

 Exmoor and the Dartmoor sheep are the principal forest 

 breeds in the West of England, located in the higher situation 

 of Devon and Cornwall, a hardy race, adapted to the poverty 

 of the pasture which the forests of Dartmoor and Exmoor 

 afford. Though bred on the heath, they are fattened in the 

 plains. The Exmoor is rather smaller than the Dartmoor, 

 and the ram has a beard somewhat like that of a goat, 2 

 which it much resembles in habits, activity, and boldness. 

 In other respects the breeds are alike. The ewes of both 

 take the ram early. 



In The Farming of Somersetshire, the late Sir Thomas 

 Dyke Acland, in 1851, wrote of the Exmoor as "a native 

 breed known as Exmoor or Porlock. The hill-country 

 farmers generally keep a breeding flock of ewes and a flock of 

 wethers to run on the hills. The general yield of wool is 5 

 Ibs. Sheep from an ordinary flock, when fat, weigh from 1 1 



1 Condensed from notes extracted from the historical preface to the 

 first volume of the Flock Book, edited by W. Dicker, for the Exmoor 

 Horn Sheep Breeders' Society, 1907. 



2 " This characteristic has now disappeared." W. DICKER. 



