THE RYELAND BREED. 159 



with larger animals, as the Southdowns, the Leicesters, and 

 the Cotswolds. It was found, however, that scarce any of 

 our races of Sheep was with more difficulty amalgamated 

 with others than the ancient Ryeland ; and a vast number of 

 worthless Sheep were long produced in Herefordshire by 

 these crosses. A better course was found to be, to substitute 

 at once the stranger stock which it was proposed to culti- 

 vate. Numbers accordingly, chiefly Leicesters and Cotswolds, 

 are now reared in the country, and the "Ryeland breed is 

 diminishing from year to year. The last great cultivator of 

 the Ryeland Breed was Mr Tomkins of Kingspion, the dis- 

 tinguished improver of the modern breed of Hereford cattle. 

 Mr Tomkins persevered in keeping up the breed of his native 

 county. He succeeded in communicating to it greater 

 symmetry of form, but he did not succeed in enlarging the 

 size to the degree of rendering it of equal economical value 

 with the races by which it has been supplanted. 



All the minor varieties of this once celebrated breed have 

 partaken more or less of change. One variety, greatly dis- 

 tinguished, inhabited the Forest of Dean, a tract of the coal- 

 formation lying between the Severn and Wye. This tract 

 was formerly covered with one of the densest forests in 

 England, " So dark and terrible," says Camden, " by reason 

 of crooked and winding waies, as also the grisly shade thereof, 

 that it made the inhabitants more fierce, and boulder to com- 

 mit robberies." By the discovery of mines in this forest, the 

 woods were gradually thinned, and at last nearly extirpated ; 

 and it then continued to be occupied by a kind of Sheep, 

 which, until our own times, were held in the greatest esti- 

 mation for the fineness of their wool. The Dean Forest 

 breed has now disappeared in the pure state, having merged 

 in the crosses of all kinds that have been made with it. A 

 similar variety occupied the Malvern Hills on the confines of 

 Worcestershire ; but here the flocks have likewise become 

 a mixture of various races. In Shropshire were several 

 varieties of the same hornless sheep, inhabiting the different 



