BREEDS AND THEIR MODIFICATIONS. 21 



moorlands, and even on some of the better class lowlands, particularly 

 where rough land was contiguous or nearly so. There was a common 

 relationship between them, but environment exercised striking in- 

 fluence over them. This influence, mainly of soil and its herbage, 

 but also climate, is very frequently shown to-day by the variation 

 in type that takes place when animals of the same parents even 

 are sent to different districts ; whilst the change in a few generations 

 is most noticeable. Breeders who establish flocks away from the 

 indigenous home of a breed are always placed at a disadvantage 

 in maintaining the accepted breed features, because the original 

 breed features resulted from the continuation of conditions which 

 had been brought to bear on them through centuries. A breeder 

 in a district indigenous to a breed does not require to bring in 

 fresh blood to retain the breed features, but the man at a distance 

 frequently has to do so or lose type. Sheep become lighter or darker 

 in the face, the wool piles closer or looser, the constitution changes ; 

 in wet climates the wool becomes more open and longer ; in dry 

 ones closer and shorter ; the sheep increase or decrease in size 

 in fact, undergo general change in accordance with the degree 

 and nature of the changes the sheep have to meet. 



At first sight the Southdown, the old horned Norfolk (of which 

 some flocks are still extant, the foundation stock of the Suffolk), 

 and the blackfaced Scotch mountain breeds, seem very dissimilar ; 

 but in their unimproved state they were far more closely alike ; 

 one has to clear one's mind of the appearance of the sheep to-day, 

 after they have been remoulded by the breed maker, or one is 

 liable to make great mistakes. But shear an old Norfolk ewe 

 and a Scotch mountain ewe as they now are, and very little 

 difference can be observed. The old Norfolk, after centuries on the 

 poor heaths of East Anglia, was ill-shapen, long-legged, a slow feeder, 

 and very short in the fleece. In that dry country a short coat 

 protected the sheep enough. On the bleaker, wetter Southdowns 

 the fleece was longer and thicker, but owing to the greater richness 

 of the feed, particularly because of the many legumes found in it, 

 and which were almost wholly absent in the Norfolk heaths, 

 the sheep had to hunt less for their food, and were shorter on the 

 legs, and in mutton yield far superior. There was, however, 

 another reason. A very common error prevails in the popular 

 mind that the Southdown is entirely the product of the chalk 

 heaths or downs of Sussex. Before root culture came into vogue, 

 and even after, the sheep of the Southdowns were regularly wintered 

 on the Weald ; the cold, wet clays of this grass district carried 

 an altogether different but useful herbage. 



In support of this statement I have held the sheep memorandum 

 and account book of Mr. Boys, of Eastbourne, in which were 

 recorded all his sheep and wool transactions from 1742 to 1783. 



