BRITISH SHEEP AND 

 SHEPHERDING. 



CHAPTER I. 



INDIGENOUS BREEDS. 



The wealth of meat, the splendid fleeces, and the early maturity 

 of the modern breeds of sheep are familiar to all, and it is only 

 fair to the great breeders who have built up these breeds that 

 those who reap benefit from their work should appreciate what 

 has been done for them. There is another aspect, and that is, 

 that it is well that the indigenous features which were originally 

 involved in the making of a breed should not be lost sight of. 

 It has to be remembered that up to the present time there have 

 been men who could remember sufficiently far back to recall many 

 breeds which were only just emerging from the crude, unimproved 

 state ; more than that, there are old men who met men whose 

 recollection dated back to the time when the earliest efforts in 

 the modern phase of sheep improvement were in progress men who 

 met Bakewell and Ellman. These, however, are few, and in 

 the course of Nature they must soon pass away. With the older 

 improved breeds, direct observation and hearsay can no longer 

 be relied upon to keep in remembrance the features of the sheep 

 in an unimproved state, and all that can really demonstrate the 

 features of these animals are those illustrations which truthfully 

 depicted them in those early days. Unfortunately, very few 

 of the portraits were faithful for they were not drawn or painted 

 with technical accuracy. Fortunately, there is one excellent 

 source of information in the series of paintings unearthed by Professor 

 Wallace at the Edinburgh University ; these were the original 

 paintings from which the coloured plates accompanying Low's 

 " Breeds of the Domestic Animals/' published in 1841, were taken. 

 The originals were painted by Shiels, R.S.A., and the drawings 

 for the plates were made by Nicholson, R.S.A. The object of 

 the set was to reproduce the breed features and characteristics, 



