CHAPTEE XI. 



THE DEVON LONGWOOLS. 



By JOSEPH DAEBY. 



variety of sheep is more valued or has become- 

 subject to higher breeding in central and eastern 

 Devon, West Somerset, and certain districts of 

 Cornwall, than the Devon Longwool. Peculiarly 

 adapted to the warm, fertile vales and rich low-lying plains of 

 this interesting part of the kingdom, it has held its own against 

 all new comers, purely because none have ever been found more 

 profitable. The late Mr. Andrew Hosegood, an extensive and 

 old-established tenant farmer of the Williton vale, about thirty 

 years since made use of the following practical remark founded 

 on experience : " In this district I have known the Exmoor, 

 Dorset, Sussex, Shropshire, Cotswold, and pure Leicesters tried,, 

 but experimenters always go back to the old sort — the Devon 

 iuongwool." 



Probably no breed of equally high claims has been less- 

 written about, although derived from the ancient Bampton stock, 

 universally acknowledged to have been an exceedingly useful 

 and extensively propagated variety in the last century. Short 

 descriptions are, of course, to be found of this parent race in 

 Arthur Young's writings, and in the papers and surveys of the 

 Board of Agriculture. But after a new variety had been created 

 by judicious crossings, improved Bamptons received scant 

 justice at the hands of journalists and book compilers on sheep- 

 husbandry — attributable in some measure, perhaps, to the wide 

 latitude of variety the intermixture of foreign blood from 

 different sources was made to assume at first. While one flock- 



