Report of the Live-Stock 
will be seen that the Judges did not think the Reading Show 
indicated rapid decline ; although " thin in the neck " and 
" too narrow " are not comments of good import. Messrs. J. and 
D. Linton (who are new exhibitors of the breed at the Royal), 
by winning two first and one second in the three classes, have 
evidently taken the highest place in the present season. Mr. 
T. H. Hutchinson fights up as manfully for this old Yorkshire 
favourite breed as he does for Shorthorns ; but it is to be feared 
that the enormous imports of colonial wool, and improved notions 
of the cook's art, will drive out of cultivation the parent and 
improver of all the Long-fleeces and of all early matured mutton. 
Probably the Cotswold is as old a breed as that experimented 
on at Dishley , very possibly it is of the same origin. It seems 
to me that there are but two or three types at most of any of 
our farm- stock, and that the sub-varieties have been produced 
by introducing to an earlier form, in more or less proportion, 
the blood of a later arrival into this country. Very probably — 
but it is not yet a point which can be ascertained — it will be 
found that the dark-faced sheep, dark-hued cattle, and dusky 
swine, approximate most closely to the animals which accom- 
panied the earliest invasion of Britain which came from the 
South ; and that the light-coloured and thick-fleshed, and long- 
haired and woolled breeds came in later with the introduction 
of the northern hordes. This speculation is, however, rather 
outside the duty of a reporter at the Royal Show at Reading. 
Yet, as it seems to me, no intelligible story can ever be told of 
the various breeds of anything which now exists on the island, 
except upon the notion just referred to ; i.e. that each — as we 
now find it — represents the modification of an earlier type, and 
has been produced by the alliance with a successor whose an- 
cestry have passed through different climatic influences and 
experienced different human management before it arrived in 
Great Britain. 
The Lincolns, rightly or wrongly, have acquired the credit of 
having the best mutton of any Longwool breed ; as they have 
of carrying the heaviest fleece. It is a common fact that, for 
some unexplained reason, these excellent sheep are never 
allowed to be seen without having been tinted with a brown 
grease. How far, if bleached like a Cotswold, their breeding 
would be admitted to be pure, seems to be a question worth 
solving. Suppose the Society were to determine that — as the 
historian of Sockburn suggested with respect to cattle — 
" That Judges, out of Lincoln, 
Decide the Cotswold prizes ; 
Atque vice versa 
As equity advises 
