CHAP. i. HAMPSHIRE DOWN SHEEP. 489 



common lands, about eighty years since, large areas of the Down lands, 

 which had served as admirable feeding grounds for the South Downs, 

 were broken up. A little later artificial manures were introduced. 

 These conditions induced the farmers to largely increase the growth of 

 artificial crops, such as turnips, rape, vetches, trifolium, rye and Italian 

 rye-grass, for sheep-feed. 



" The consumption of these artificial crops by sheep led breeders 

 generally to turn their attention to the system adopted by the Hampshire 

 men of selling their wether lambs, in the late summer or earl} r autumn, 

 instead of keeping them, as was then the custom, until they became 

 two-teeth, or four-teeth sheep, when they were sold at a smaller 



Photo by O. H. Parsons. 



Fig. 120. Hampshire Down Shearling Ram. 



First at the Royal Agricultural Society's Show at Lincoln, 1907. 

 The property of Mr. J. Flower, Chilmark, Salisbury. 



price than the lambs now realise. Under these conditions it was 

 important to secure early maturity and greater size, and the flock- 

 masters, with very few exceptions, at once crossed with the Hampshire 

 Downs, and now successfully compete at all the early fairs with their 

 Hampshire brethren. 



" It is now generally allowed that no breed of sheep attains such early 

 maturity as the Hampshire Down lambs in the month of March and 

 April, as they attain a dead weight of from 12 to 14 Ib. per quarter, and 

 realise from 50s. to 55s. per head, and by the month of October (that 

 is, at an age of 9 months) weigh as much as 80 to 100 Ib. of mutton, 

 and in some seasons realise as much as 75s. per head, whilst the ram 

 lambs, which are sold for service during the months of July and August 

 (at which age the sires of this breed are generally worked) often reach 

 a dead weight of 120 Ib., and command, at the auctions of the season, 



