30 SHEEP : BREEDS AND MANAGEMENT. 



concluding whereof he granted licence for certain Coteswold 

 sheep to be transported into the country of Spaine, which 

 have there since mightily increased and multiplied to the 

 Spanish profit." This and other evidence seems to point to a 

 fine-woolled breed more nearly resembling Merinos or Leo- 

 minster sheep than the modern Cotswold, which is evidently 

 not the sheep alluded to in these old records. Professor Low, 

 writing at a period now belonging to a past generation, tells 

 us that the Cotswold sheep of to-day had inhabited the 

 district " beyond the memory of the living generation," which 

 would take us back far into the last century. It is probable 

 that they are an offshoot of the Midland long-woolled sheep 

 which Markham speaks of as extending into Warwickshire 

 and Worcestershire. And yet, in the middle of the seven- 

 teenth century, this authority says : " The sheep upon Cotsal 

 Hills are of better bone, shape, and burthen, but their staple is 

 coarser and deeper than the Lempster (Leominster) side." 

 And, again, speaking of the Leicestershire sheep, he says: 

 " Yet is their wool coarser than that of Cotsal," showing that 

 the Cotswold sheep at that time were intermediate in wool 

 between the Ryeland, which is the Lempster breed, and the 

 old Midland Leicester. The short pasture of the Cotswolds 

 would naturally tend to produce a finer wool than the rich 

 grass land of Leicester and Warwickshire, and hence it is 

 not difficult to account for the difference in the quality of the 

 wool. The writer was well acquainted with some of the old 

 standards of thirty years ago on the Cotswolds, and has heard 

 them speak of their fathers going regularly into Leicestershire 

 to buy rams, and there is no doubt that the old type of sheep 

 was greatly improved by the new Leicester. The breaking 

 up of the downs and the cultivation of the turnip could not 

 fail to affect the sheep, and would tend to increase the weight 

 of the carcase and the length and strength of the wool. The 

 attention of the Cotswold men was directed to wool of a 

 certain class, for they have long preferred a bold and open 

 curl rather than the close spiral of the Leicester. The face 



