700 Report on the Sheep Exhibited at Windsor. 
prize list, or by other means, the Merino movement, the Society 
may be said to have assisted in burying this particular idea. 
One or two Portland sheep were shown. This is a smaller 
tribe of the Dorset Horn breed, and has been kept unmixed on 
the isle of Portland from time immemorial. 
Report of the Judges of Kentish or Romney Marsh and "Any 
other Breed " of Sheep. 
Kentish or Romney Maksh Sheep. [Classes 197 to 199.] 
This useful and hardy Class is hardly up to its usual standard. 
"Ant othee Breed." [Classes 236 and 237.] 
The South Devons far surpass everything else in this Class. It occurs to 
us that a separate Class might be formed. As to the others, it is veiy diffi- 
cult to form any opinion, as the type is so different. 
Robert L. Cobb. 
G. Webb. 
Herdwioks, Lonks, &c. 
The Herdwicks are generally agreed to be an alien race. 
Two traditions of their accidental importation are current. The 
most picturesque, and consequently the most popular, is that a 
ship from the Spanish Armada was wrecked on the Cumberland 
coast, and that the sheep which were the parents of this breed 
were cast ashore. The other variant of the tradition is that the 
wreck took place early in the last century, and that the sheep 
on board the ship came from Scotland. Mr. Rowlandson, again, 
writing in 1849 in the Journal,^ expressed the opinion that the 
Herdwicks were a Welsh breed. This opinion is, however, quite 
unsupported, and, whether we accept the Armada assumption or 
no, there is little doubt that the story of the shipwrecked sheep 
has a basis of truth. Whatever the date of their introduction, 
they spread rapidly, although the first proprietors endeavoured 
to create a monopoly by forming an association somewhat similar 
to that of the Dishley breeders. They soon superseded the old 
Fell breed, which was a white-faced homed sheep. In 1866, 
when Mr. Dixon wrote about them in the Journal,^ they covered 
Cumberland, Westmoreland, and part of Lancashire, and he 
referred to the improvement which had been effected in them 
and to their growing popularity. The publication of that essay, 
as a Herdwick breeder writing in the Live Stock Journal Almanack 
bears testimony, " did much to make the breed known." The 
Judges of Herdwicks at the Liverpool Show in 1877 reported that 
' Jonmal, Vol. X. 1st Series (1849), p. 440. 
» Journal, Vol. II. 2nd Series (18C6), p. 363, 
