8 BRITISH SHEEP AND SHEPHERDING. 



like systematic sheep improvement was unknown until Bakewell 

 started to improve the Leicester, and he carried out no experiments 

 before 1755 ; consequently nothing was done before 160 years 

 ago. Much has been done since. The position up to this time 

 was that there was relatively a small area of land under the plough, 

 as compared with that a century after, tillage poor, manure 

 deficient in fact, it was much as it had been three or four centuries 

 previously. Going further back, the greater part of the country 

 had been under forest and wastes ; much land was unenclosed ; 

 sheep were wool-producers and manure-carters, carrying their 

 dung on to the fallows at night after feeding on the grass by 

 day ; there were no turnips ; no clovers were grown in rotation ; 

 in fact, when not folded they roamed at will in many instances. 

 Where there was little arable land they were rarely folded. Having 

 nothing but what was indigenous to the land, their constitutions 

 adapted themselves to their food and environment ; and over 

 districts as far as the food, soil and climate were closely the same, 

 the sheep took certain characteristic features, such as we should 

 now call breed characteristics. In some instances great similarity 

 existed over wide areas ; in others, in very limited ones ; in fact, 

 these breeds or variations of breeds were almost innumerable, 

 although in many instances the origin was a common one in the 

 remote past. 



There was one very noteworthy feature : the sheep, at any 

 rate where they existed in considerable numbers, which had 

 developed on a certain type of land, food, climate, altitude, &c., 

 recognised in one of those instinctive ways difficult to explain 

 that if they were to be mated with sheep developed under other 

 conditions, the offspring would suffer ; and though sheep produced 

 under two totally different sets of circumstances met at the point 

 where the circumstances differed, they would not cross-breed. 

 Nor would strange flocks brought together mate, unless inten- 

 tionally confined to do so ; each would separate and graze in 

 different parts. Moreover, this instinct remains, although many 

 generations of man-controlled breeding have been brought to 

 bear on them. Had there been indiscriminate inter-breeding in 

 the old days, there could have been no pure strains or breeds ; 

 all would have been mongrels, as were those which were kept 

 in small numbers and bred as they met. 



The good work done by Bakewell on the Leicester was soon 

 shown, for his improved sheep had great influence on other breeds 

 with which they were used. Then Ellman, of Glynde, who had 

 started in sheep improvement some few years subsequently to 

 Bakewell, greatly improved the Southdown. With one or other 

 or both of these breeds, sheep improvement throughout the country 

 made vast strides. For a time there was no particular method 



