MODERN SHEEP: BREEDS AND MANAGEMENT. 109 



ing, you have done selling/ and with such a breed of sheep this 

 truism will ever continue to make itself manifest. * * * The 

 sound land to be generally found in Roscommon, with the intelli- 

 gent judgment of an industrious people, have now produced a 

 sheep with an excellent class of wool and mutton, and of entirely 

 different formation from centuries ago, and this is what has given 

 Roscommon men pre-eminence in their flocks, from which others 

 are year by year replenished. In the breeds of sheep in England, 

 her demands some years ago were for a thoroughly artificial animal, 

 calculated to increase the area of tillage, while Ireland had less 

 desire for tillage, and wanted a sheep sufficiently hardy to stand 

 the winter without shelter, active in pursuit of food, a good grower 

 and weigher when it reached the abattoir, and of a weight suffi- 

 cient to repay the expense involved by its protracted keep, and an 

 animal possessing a heavy fleece of long silky wool. This is the 

 mission the Roscommon sheep fulfills in its present far too limited 

 sphere. 



"What the Balfes, the Taaffes, the Flanagans, the Cottons, and 

 the Flynns have done for the breed many years ago has been well 

 maintained of late years in keeping up Roscommon sheep to tli3 

 highest standard of perfection, so much so, that the breed can 

 now hold its own in public competition with all pure bred flocks. 

 It must have been very gratifying to lovers of the breed to find 

 that at the Royal Society's Sheep Show of 1895 the challenge cup 

 in the long-wooled classes was carried off by three superb shearling 

 rams from the well managed flock of the Messrs. Cotton, Longford 

 House, Castlerea. They weighed at that time 21 stone respectively, 

 all showing size, rib, symmetry, and quality of wool. Mr. M. 

 Flanagan of Tomona, Tulsk, had the premier winner in the aged 

 ram class at last year's Dublin show, with his strong four-shear 

 sheep, that won first in his class two years before. He weighed 27 

 stone 12 lb., and was as near to the type of what Roscommons 

 should be bred to as could be desired. In the class for ram lambs 

 Mr. John Keane, of Templepatrick, Mullingar, won the chief honors 

 with a well grown pen, scaling 14 stone each. For these well 

 brought out sires there is always the keenest demand, and they are 

 now brought to all parts of the country in developing the breed. 

 For ordinary marketable purposes there is no better stock. Mr. 

 Alfred Mansell, the well known auctioneer of College Hill, Shrews- 

 bury, writing of them says: 'Last year I killed five lambs from 

 Roscommon ewes by a Shrop ram which dressed 82 lb. each.' " 



THE RYELAND. 



To the writer's mind the Ryeland is one of the best breeds of 

 sheep in existence. Its fleece is very fine, the finest, in fact, of 

 any of the British breeds, and there certainly is a place for it in 



