46 THE SOUTH DOWNS 



mind, fixed the type by in-breeding,* and then im- 

 pressed his flock and his standard upon the whole 

 countryside. He may have taken his ideas from Bake- 

 well, but he did for the Southdowns what Bakewell 

 did for the Leicesters ; and which race has done most 

 for the improvement of British sheep may well be a 

 matter for argument, seeing that the Southdowns have 

 contributed the essential element of quality to all the 

 Down breeds Hampshires, Oxfords, Dorsets, Suffolks, 

 and Shropshires. Of John Ellman himself the only 

 biography is a verbose and colourless performance ; 

 but we get some glimpses of the man from Arthur 

 Young's accounts of visits to Glynde in the Annals of 

 Agriculture, enough to show that he was one of those 

 leaders of a countryside whose work stands for many 

 generations. Amongst other things, after several men 

 had failed, he undertook the reclamation of the estuary 

 of the Ouse, then a wash of marsh and tidal mud-flat 

 between Lewes and Newhaven ; he straightened and 

 embanked the river, making navigation both safe and 

 speedy, and at the same time won for agriculture more 

 than a thousand acres of good pasture. Si monu- 

 mentum requiris circumspice might indeed be said of 

 Ellman by any one standing as we did on Mount 

 Caburn, above his old home, with the Southdown 

 flocks dotting the hills round about and the broad 

 green expanse of the Lewes Level at our feet. 



