president's address. 173 



that are zoological, and deduced from special experience in the 

 breeding of sheep, undertaken with distinct and pre-determined 

 objects. 



There seems to exist a tendency in the course of nature to 

 provide that the colour of an animal, say, among quadrupeds, of 

 a sheep, or, among birds, of a grouse, should incline to correspond 

 in some degree with the hues of the soil or surface on which its 

 life is to be passed. In the grouse we do certainly find that the 

 darkest and most uniformly heather- clad moors produce the 

 darkest mahogany-feathered moorfowl. Take, for instance, the 

 dark unbroken heather between the headwaters of Weardale and 

 Teesdale for the darkest grouse, and take again some of the bent- 

 and-heather ranges between the Reed and Coquet, or between 

 the Coquet and Breamish, for birds of more chequered feather. 



In sheep, we find that the horned blackface, with legs equally 

 black, is historically known to have been long-established on the 

 high heather-clad moors at the heads of Lune and Tees, of Wear, 

 Allen, and South Tyne. From thence it is said to have spread 

 northward into Dumfries and Lanarkshire, and thence again into 

 the Highlands ; always displacing certain ancient, but feebler, 

 dun or dun-faced breeds, which formerly occupied the Scottish 

 hills and mountains, and which were strictly under close domes-" 

 tication, being housed at night from the danger of wolves ; and 

 thence they came to need protection from cold also in winter. 

 A remnant of this old Scottish ohm-faced race still occupies some 

 of the mountain ranges in the Isle of Arran. 



Southdown sheep, being subjected to the reflection of a power- 

 ful sun, from the arid downs of our southern English counties, as- 

 sume a brown complexion and tawny legs, much the same as the 

 human inhabitants of the same country become very tawny, 

 whose occupations of shepherds or ploughmen keep them all day 

 in the open air. And formerly considerable extents of heath, 

 juniper, and furze were depastured by these little hard-mouthed 

 sheep, which extended also over the wide heather ranges in 

 Surrey, to utilise which they were well adapted. In the south- 

 down breed we thus again sec that the colouring or complexion 



