43 8 SHEEP 



conceded that the breed of to-day is much improved over the 

 old type, this improvement having been largely secured by using 

 Leicester rams on Cotswold ewes. So indiscriminately were 

 they used between 1780 and 1820 that we are told not a Cots- 

 wold flock was spared. The Leicester blood reduced the size 

 and constitution, but improved the symmetry, producing better 

 bodies, finer wool, more quality, and earlier-maturing sheep. 

 During the last century the families of Smith of Bibury, Hewer 



Fig. 205. Houlton's 945 — 39250, an imported Cotswold yearling ram, owned 

 by the Ohio State University. This ram is in thin flesh with about five 

 months of fleece. Photograph by the author 



of North Leach, Lane, and Game materially improved the breed 

 by judicious selection and some in-and-in breeding. On the dis- 

 persion of the Hewer flock various breeders purchased and 

 established flocks which are numbered among the important 

 ones of to-day in England. 



The introduction of Cotswold sheep to the United States 

 probably first occurred in 1832, when Mr. C. Dunn, who lived 

 near Albany, New York, imported a ram. In 1834 Isaac May- 

 nard of Coshocton County, Ohio, brought the first Cotswolds 



