THE OLD WILTSHIRE BREED. 121 



remarkable degree, to the conditions, both natural and artifi- 

 cial, under which it was reared. The animals lived in a 

 country of chalky hills, inland, and not exposed to severities 

 of temperature, but unshaded from the sun's rays : the herb- 

 age being scanty, they had to move to considerable distances 

 to collect their food ; and the practice, from time immemorial, 

 had been established, of driving them great distances to and 

 from the fold. To these circumstances was adapted an ani- 

 mal having a light fleece, with strong muscular limbs, and 

 with the habitude of subsisting on scanty herbage. Its fleece 

 was not only light, beyond that of any other Sheep in this 

 country, but its belly was destitute of wool, a character 

 which would not have existed but in the case of a warm dry 

 soil, where the animal did not require a coat of wool between 

 his belly and the humid earth. The animal, however, which 

 had acquired these properties was eminently deficient in 

 others which are sought for in the more improved state of 

 the Sheep. Subsisting on scanty dry food, he had acquired 

 the habitude of fattening slowly ; and the Old Wiltshire, 

 though greatly valued by the butchers, was one of the most 

 difficult to be fattened of the larger Sheep of England. 

 There cannot exist a doubt of the great benefit which accrues 

 to individuals and the country, by the substitution of the 

 Southdown s for this coarse uncultivated race. It may be 

 asked, Could not the Wiltshire Sheep have been improved, 

 the faults of their form corrected, their size preserved, and 

 the fineness of their fleece maintained ? Beyond a question 

 all these purposes could have been effected by the care of 

 breeders, directed for a sufficient period to the improvement 

 of the animal. But these are labours which would have re- 

 quired a generation at least ; and the interest of breeders 

 was better served by taking that which was formed to their 

 hands, than by waiting the slow improvements of a race so 

 radically defective.* 



* In my large Work, a representation is given of the ancient Wiltshire 

 Breed unmixed with any other blood, affording perhaps the last record that 



