DOMESTIC ANIMALS "WILD" 361 



account for the remarkably rapid increase of blacks between the 'nineties 

 and the early years of the present century. Configuration of the 

 ground must again be taken into consideration a series of narrow 

 strips practically separate from one another except on the tops. On 

 one of them we have supposed a minute flock of blacks to have evolved 

 itself. In process of time this little sept would no longer be able to 

 obtain feeding in its original strip. Other larger strips would be 

 stocked, other little flocks would be invaded by members of our con- 

 jectural black flock. The smaller number of blacks found in the far 

 selections may be in this way accounted for, the ewes of these strips 

 having been for a lesser number of seasons in contact with No. 4 

 ribbon of ground, the strip assumed to be the black centre-spot. In- 

 terbreeding would have happened on a small scale, the rams of No. 4 

 strip only tupping the ewes of the sections into which they had spread 

 immediately to right and left. 



Increase of feed on the tops during the years when the block was 

 unused throughout summer and autumn, tempting the wild flocks 

 upwards from all the strips, would accelerate the change. From dusk 

 to dawn on the tops there would occur interminglement of rams from 

 every ribbon of land. Indiscriminate tupping of wild ewes would become 

 the order of the day, black rams and white rams mating with black 

 ewes and white ewes on the neutral ground of the tops. Furthermore, 

 I think it is possible that all black ewes mating thus " held " to the black 

 ram, and that it is likely that a large percentage of the white ewes also 

 " held " to the black ram and produced black lambs, especially to males 

 black for three or four or five or six or seven or eight generations ; 

 to rams, in fact, where the black strain may be supposed to have 

 become more or less fixed. 1 



There may have been ancillary reasons, too, favouring the domina- 

 tion of the black a greater virility and activity, a larger share, in fact, 

 of the wildness of the feral ancestors of all sheep. Certain it is, at 

 any rate, that in a bad hogget season the least well - woolled sheep 

 survive, hoggets whose feeding has gone to the original qualities of 

 frame and hair stock, in short, that show the least effect of man's 



1 Passing through Canada on one occasion, I was taken to see a flock of Karakul on the 

 foothills of the Rockies. Earns of this breed put to white "range" ewes throw about 99 per 

 cent black lambs. Wensleydale ewes to this day, though black stock has been eliminated for 

 generations, produce about 25 per cent of black lambs. The black drop seems in fact to be 

 constantly attempting to reassert itself. 



