4 BRITISH SHEEP AND SHEPHERDING. 



minence to certain features than did others, and how healthy rivalry 

 sprang up, just as it does to-day; but then they were much 

 more face to face with raw indigenous characteristics than they 

 are now. 



Having fixed a type, and produced an animal that could greatly 

 influence for the better those which had no fixed type, it is easy 

 to recognise how farmers welcomed the flock-improving rams. 

 Incidentally, it seems to be very often forgotten by those who 

 see virtue in narrowly made breeds, and claim that their breeds 

 were never crossed, that the rams from the pioneer breeders did 

 not go on to pure breeds, but on to the ordinary stock of the country, 

 and that this ordinary stock was very variously bred ; also that 

 many of our best flocks have come from flocks thus established, 

 and through which, often in very thin streams, no doubt, but 

 fortunately still there, the blood of a mixed ancestry runs. As a 

 matter of fact, there is practically no really single-blood breed, 

 as far as can be shown. If our breeds had been of single blood, 

 they would never have possessed their great cosmopolitan powers 

 of adaptation. From the coarse, horned, whitefaced old Wiltshire 

 to the modern Hampshire is indeed a triumph for the breeder. 



As a more modern development, and one accomplished to a large 

 extent by those living, may be instanced the Suffolk Down, which 

 had as an indigenous foundation the long-legged, horned, unthrifty 

 Norfolk horned sheep, and as its improver the Southdown. 



The Cheviot ewe shown represents the little hill breed after 

 it had been influenced by the Lincoln. Although having been 

 shorn, she shows the characteristic Cheviot frill that is left behind 

 on any breed into which it is instilled, and is so marked in the 

 Exmoor, Komney Marsh, and Ryeland three breeds which, under 

 the influence of the help given long ago, are coming so fully into 

 the public eye at this time. 



The Leicester, of all the breeds at the time when the paintings 

 were made, shows the type and characteristics associated with 

 modern sheep ; it stands among the other breeds with the excep- 

 tion of the Southdown, perhaps as the only modern breed, and 

 it is little wonder that it was used so universally throughout the 

 country, alongside of the Southdown, to convert the unimproved 

 breeds into thrifty sheep. The toning down of the old marsh-bred 

 Lincoln, enabling it in our day to become so appreciated in all 

 wool-growing countries, is an evidence of its influence, though it 

 was shown on the other longwool breeds throughout the country, 

 and was the forerunner of, and great instrument in, the developing 

 of early maturity in British breeds of sheep. 



With these instances the other breeds can be examined, and 

 with the knowledge of the origin of any breed, it is easy to recognise 

 why certain features have been kept prominently forward in them, 



