H2 MODERN SHEEP: BREEDS AND MANAGEMENT, 



ject to a precarious subsistence on the forest and hills, it is the 

 opinion of many sensible farmers that they are altogether as 

 profitable stock." 



The following comprehensive description of the management 

 of the Exmoor appears in the prize report written by Sir T. D. 

 Acland on the farming of Somerset in the "Journal of the Royal 

 Agriculture Society" (1850) : 



"The hill-country farmer generally keeps a breeding flock of 

 horned ewes and a small flock of wethers, which run on the hills 

 summer and winter. The number of his ewes will be limited by 

 the extent of his water meadows, on which he relies in great meas- 



Exmoor Ram; Out of Fleece Skinner Type. 



ure for the keep of the couples after the lambs are dropped. The 

 number of hill wethers depends on the extent of the common 

 right attached to the farm. About the 20th of June all the sheep 

 are gathered for sorting and shearing. The mouths of the sheep 

 are examined and those whose teeth are broken are drafted and 

 kept back from the hill to be sold or fatted off. The ewe hoggets 

 replace the dra-ft-ewes and the wether hogs of the former season 

 are shorn with the hill wethers and turned off to the hill after 

 being signed with some large mark which can be seen at a dis- 

 tance. They cost nothing but the trouble of an occasional gather- 

 ing until the next year, and the only profit they yield is about 5 Ib. 

 of wool. In their fourth or fifth year they may be brought on to 

 grass. They are also used as laborers on the farm, to eat the 

 grass down close in the fall of the year, and are sometimes marched 



