3C)2 Dr. Parry's Essay on the Nature, Produce, Origin, 



would speak of the depth of the staple of wool, or the length and largeness of tlje 

 body, and breadth of the buttocks, as characteristic excellencies of the Merino 

 race. 



We have some evidence of the general nature of our sheep, at a still earlier 

 period, 1533, the twenty-fifth of Henry VIII. when we have seen that they gteatly 

 abounded, in tlic Historia An^lica of Polydore Virgil. He says that there are 

 " every where in England hills unsheltered by trees, and unwatered by spring*, 

 " producing the shortest and finest herbage, which, nevertheless, furnishes abundance 

 " of food to sheep. Over these hills there wander flocks of sheep of an extraor- 

 " dinary whiteness, bearing fleeces much finer than any others." " Colles passim 

 " multi, nullis arboribus consiti, nullisque aquarum fontibus irrigui, qui herbam 

 *' tenuissimam atqiie brevissimam producunt, quae tamen abunde ovibus pabu- 

 •" lum suppeditat. Per eos ovium greges candidissinii vagantur, quee longe 

 " omnium aliarum tenuissima ferunt vellera."* 



According to this author, the sheep yielding these very fine fleeces were not 

 " albae," that is simply white, but of a brighter brilliant whiteness; and not merely 

 " candidse," but " candidissimae ;" of a whiteness superlatively bright. This 

 epithet might be reasonably enough applied by a foreigner to our native sheep 

 on the mountains, comparatively with those which he had been accustomed to see in 

 Itai^', or Spain; but would ill suit the Merino, the external appearance of which 

 would lead a stranger to them to suspect that they had been first rolled in a kennel, and 

 then compelled to make a progress through a chimney. To employ the terms super- 

 latively brilliant whiteness as characteristic of a Merino sheep, is much the same as 

 if, by way of accurate discrimination, we were to speak of the downy softness of a 

 file, or the hoarse thunderings of a flute. The Merino, therefore, was certainly not 

 the breed, which wandered on our hills in the year 1533. 



In the quotation given above from Drayton, the same quality of whiteness is 

 attributed to the Cotswold sheep. Their faces and legs, are said to be never 

 sullied with brown or black. Those of the Merino, on the contrary, are very often 

 speckled or clouded with a reddish brown, or fawn colour And so far are th'ey 

 from becoming " as white as winter's snow" when " newly washed," that no 

 washing in any stream of mere cold water, will do more than bring their fleeces to 

 a hue of yellowish brown, or gray. 



* Lib. I. page 12. 



