318 THE SHEEP OF GREAT BRITAIN. 



kept in service until five or six years old, and many of his 

 progeny have been prize-winners. 



Most of the other leading breeders have annual ram sales 

 either at home or at neighbouring markets and fairs, and have 

 had little difficulty during the past ten years of realising at least 

 101. each for their best. Indeed, Mr. A. C. Skinner's average in 

 1882 was 121. per ram for all he had to dispose of ; but times 

 have not been so good since then, and few breeders have gone 

 to so much expense as Mr. Skinner in the selection of sires for 

 his flock. He bought the first-prize sheep of Messrs. Bird 

 which triumphed at the Royal International at Kilburn, and 

 successively employed after him Mr. Franklin's first winner at 

 the Devon County Torquay Show, and Mr. Norris's champion 

 ram at the Plymouth Show of 1885. Latterly he has been 

 using a son of Comet, before-mentioned, also a first winner bred 

 by Sir J. H. Heathcoat-Amory, and hired from him. 



Fixity of type is everything when attempts are made to 

 advance such a breed as the Devon Longwool, which up to a 

 comparatively recent period were exceedingly diverse in the 

 varying characteristics of different flocks. That this evil is 

 rapidly being removed must be evident to frequenters of the 

 showyard, there being much more uniformity of character in 

 the exhibits than there was a dozen years since. 



Some flocks that furnish some of the best rams produced in 

 the county of Devon have been so long bred to pure Leicester 

 rams that their owners claim for them the more aristocratic 

 designation, although these sheep, from great size and bulk of 

 frame and heavy productions of both fleece and carcass, are not 

 the kind that Bakewell probably would have deemed Leicesters. 

 Still these originally were the ones resorted to for rams by many 

 possessing ewes of a coarser type. Ten years ago the Court 

 Hayes flock of Mr. E-admore, although he considered it to be 

 Leicester and not Devon Longwools, furnished the stuff out of 

 which the latter were made, as the largest sheep breeders about 

 Bampton and Tiverton were accustomed to hire his rams, and 

 had been in the habit of doing so for many years. He had 

 selected his tups carefully during the last half century from the 

 pure-bred Leicester flocks of Messrs. Smith of Dishley, Burgess, 

 Farrow, Spencer, Sandy, Pawlett, Col. Ings, Sir Tatton Sykes, 



h 



