MEDIUM-TAILED BRITISH BREEDS 103 



Continent, the Cape, Australia, New Zealand, and 

 Canada. The special claim of this breed to favour 

 appears to be due to the fecundity of the ewes, 

 which commonly give birth to twins, and not infre- 

 quently to triplets. 



A much more celebrated breed is the Southdown 

 of which the original home is the chalk hills of 

 Sussex ; these sheep, together with the nearly allied 

 but larger Hampshire downs, occupying somewhat 

 the same position among sheep as is held by short- 

 horns among cattle. The black faces and limbs of 

 the sheep of the down type indicate their descent 

 from the old black-faced heath breeds, which when 

 removed to better pasture probably tended to lose 

 their horns. At any rate, it is certain that the 

 Sussex Downs were originally the home of a breed 

 of small sheep with black faces, light fore-quarters, 

 narrow chests, long necks, elongated, slender limbs, 

 and short, fine, curling wool, which showed a marked 

 tendency towards blackness. Professor Low ^ states 

 that although small horns were probably present in 

 the ancestral stock, they have been absent in the 

 breed from the date of the earliest records ; on the 

 other hand. Professor Plumb ^ definitely asserts that 

 small horns were occasionally retained. 



From these small and ill-formed native Sussex 

 sheep were developed by careful selection the modern 



' Domesticated Animals of the British Islands, 2nd ed., p. 162. 

 * Types and Breeds of Farm Animals, p. 378. 



