200 THE SHEEP. 



after a time, it effected an important change in a great part 

 of the lighter Sheep of the country. In many cases it has 

 become mixed in blood with them, and in many it has caused 

 a substitution of the heavy-woolled for the light, over large 

 tracts of the country, so that entire districts, which, little 

 more than twenty years ago, were stocked with the Short- 

 woolled breeds, have not now one flock of them remaining. 

 In every way, then, the diffusion of this breed has added to 

 the value of the live stock of the country. It has caused a 

 superior race of animals to be reared in former districts of 

 the Down arid Forest Breeds, and extended over the richer 

 country one more suited for general cultivation than the 

 older and coarser races ; and has been the means of commu- 

 nicating to the former varieties of Long-woolled Sheep a uni- 

 formity of character eminently favourable to further improve- 

 ment, by multiplying the animals of a given breed which can 

 be selected for breeding. It has even improved the agricul- 

 ture of the country in an eminent degree, by calling forth a 

 larger production of forage and nerbage plants, for supplying 

 food to a superior race of animals. 



Objections have been, from time to time, urged against the 

 extension of this breed, founded on its supposed inferiority 

 in size, in growth of wool, in hardiness, and fecundity of the 

 females, to some of the breeds which it supplanted. The 

 inferiority in size has been generally exaggerated with rela- 

 tion to this breed, and in all cases it produces a greater 

 weight with the same bulk of body ; and even where it is 

 deficient in weight, there has been a compensation in that 

 tendency to arrive at an earlier maturity, in which it emi- 

 nently excels all the races which have preceded it. If the 

 wool shall be less in quantity, or inferior in certain proper- 

 ties, to that of some of the older varieties, it must not be for- 

 gotten, that the most esteemed of these varieties, as the Old 

 Lincoln and Teeswater, were not suited for that extensive 

 diffusion, which has given so great a public importance to 

 the breed of Bakewell, and that the extension of the new 



