THE SUSSEX, OR SOUTHDOWN 601 



The flesh is of excellent quality, but it can be easily 

 made too fat. The average weight for well-kept tegs should 

 be about 18 Ibs. per quarter at twelve months. The offal, as 

 compared with that of other breeds, is of small amount. 

 Fat wethers rising two years old, belonging to Earl Bathurst, 

 and sold in Cirencester market in the first week of December 

 1884, dressed to 138 Ibs. per carcase, or 34.5 Ibs. per quarter 

 dead-weight, and yielded 65.83 per cent, dead-weight to live- 

 weight. But since that time the demand for sheep of this 

 age and size has almost disappeared. 



The original habitat of this breed was the region of the 

 South Downs of Sussex and the neighbouring counties. 

 Low described them as " a range of low chalky hills 5 or 6 

 miles in breadth, stretching along the coast upwards of 60 

 miles, and passing into the chalky lands of Hants on the 

 west." The old beliefs, that they are not good rent-payers, 

 except in their native district, and specially liable to foot-rot, 

 have been disproved by modern experience. 



The genius who began in 1778 to take the lead in improv- 

 ing the breed was John Ellman (1783-1832). He occupied 

 for fifty years the farm of Glynde, near Lewes, in Sussex. 

 In the time of Arthur Young, who wrote in 1788, the South- 

 down was speckle-faced, and one of the smallest of many 

 local varieties of fine-woolled, but ill-shaped, semi-mountain 

 breeds of sheep, producing mutton of extremely fine flavour. 

 Ellman has recorded 1 that " at the outset of the work of 

 improvement little in-breeding was practised. As improve- 

 ment progressed it was otherwise, and the difficulty of 

 obtaining good animals from other flocks was an impedi- 

 ment to perfection. For many years the Southdown sheep 

 were remarkable for their strength of constitution, but as 

 the march of intellect discovered new phases, the tide of 

 emulation fairly setting in, the Bakewell school hurried 

 agricultural improvements at a hazardous pace." Although 

 Bakewell urged it, the Southdown breed was never crossed 

 with the improved Leicester. Whatever the origin of the 

 breed, which is lost in antiquity, there can be no manner of 

 doubt that the influence of situation, including elevation, 



1 In a paper revised by his son Thomas Ellman of Beddingham, 

 and published in the Report of the Proceedings of the Southdown Sheep 

 Club, in 1893. 



