THE OLDER LONG-WOOLLED BREEDS. 181 



change of characters, northward into Durham, and south- 

 ward through the greater part of Yorkshire, until it merged 

 in the heavy-woolled Sheep of the marshes on the one hand, 

 and those of Leicestershire and the other midland counties 

 on the other. The true Teeswater Sheep, as reared in their 

 native valley, were of the larger class, very tall, bearing a 

 long but not a very thick fleece, inferior only in toughness 

 and length of filaments to that of the ancient Lincolns. The 

 wool was, however, more hard, less uniform in the staple, 

 and very coarse towards the extremities. These Sheep were 

 of an exceedingly uncouth form. They had coarse heads, large 

 round haunches, and long stout limbs. They were slow in 

 fattening, and required for their support good pastures, with 

 a supply of hay and corn. They were the most prolific of all 

 our races of Sheep, bearing usually two, and not unfrequently 

 three, lambs at a birth ; and they were surpassed by no other 

 Sheep in the faculty of yielding milk. This coarse and heavy 

 breed has now entirely disappeared in its original form. The 

 New Leicester Breed progressively extended northward 

 through the Vale of York, and at a still earlier period had 

 been established in Northumberland, by breeders, the con- 

 temporaries of Bakewell. Under these circumstances, the 

 older breed of the Tees soon gave place to the new breed of 

 the Midland Counties, either by substitution of the one for 

 the other, or by the effects of crossing. At the commence- 

 ment of the present century, a few individual Sheep only of 

 the older breed were to be found in the hands of some old 

 farmers, unwilling to relinquish preconceived opinions and 

 habits. At the present time, not one living example, perhaps, 

 remains of the true Old Teeswater Breed. The only traces 

 of it that present themselves are in the largeness of size of 

 the sheep of particular breeders, who have continued to pre- 

 fer a stock of larger sheep to the more modern variety of 

 higher breeding. 



Proceeding southward, the Teeswater and its varieties 

 gradually merged in the former breeds of Leicestershire and 



