Farm-Prize Competition, 1880. 
499 
vessel on the coast, but it is more probable that they were, at 
some time or other, imported. That they met a want of this 
mountain district cannot be denied, for they hold their own 
against all comers, and indeed they seem the only sheep which 
can really brave the fury of the storm on these wild fells. 
The characteristics of the breed may have become familiar to 
some of my readers at Kilburn last year, where there was a 
special class for them, and where I am told they excited the 
facetious remarks of more than one stock reporter, as presenting 
most of the points in a sheep which should be carefully avoided !* 
Not so, however, think their admirers in the north. 
They are certainly very odd in appearance, being diminutive 
in size, their faces and legs grey or mottled, their wool of a 
hairy texture and a peculiar smutty appearance behind the neck, 
and sometimes in other parts, giving them a weird aspect. 
It is worth notice that the Herdwick tups are sometimes horned 
and sometimes polled, but generally the former. Castration 
almost invariably prevents the growth of horns, and the females 
are never cornute. They are not great breeders. " Twins are 
putten in at t' mooth," is, in the Cumberland vernacular, the 
mode of expressing the well-known increase of fecundity in 
sheep by the consumption of stimulating food, and herbage of 
this sort few of the lake-fells afford. 
Although Mr. Dickinson, in the article which I have before 
quoted (p. 264, vol. xiii.. Old Series) places them as " lowest 
in the scale of excellence," they no doubt have peculiar merits, 
which have fixed them in the district as the most suitable 
sheep for exposed mountains with excessive rainfall. Their 
fleece is of a character which gives it a remarkable power of 
resisting storms, viz., very close in texture, though withal coarse 
and hairy. " It is in their ability to tide through a real 
Siberian winter that the real blue blood of the Herdwick comes 
out. In a storm they are excellent generals, forming themselves 
into solid squares on the most exposed part of the hill until it 
sweeps past, and then trying to trample down the snow by 
a combined movement."' Add to these qualities that they 
are much attached to their own mountains, or place of breeding, 
and that they "keep their heaf" better than any other kind, 
* I subjoin the Eeport wliicli appeared in the ' Field ' newspaper, July 24, 
1880, on the Herdwieks at Carlisle. It was written In' a well-known stock 
reporter, and represents the views of a severe critic, but tliere are t-ome assertions 
in it which will scarcely bear examination. The height of the Cumberland 
ranges, for instance, is so much greater than the Chevidt hills that one need 
scarcely point out the fallacy of that portion of the writer's statements. The 
highest portion of Cheviot is nearly 600 feet less in elevation than Scawfell 
and from 400 to 500 feet less than many of the mountains which form the 
grazing grounds of the Herdwieks. Moreover, the Cheviot range is mostly 
rounded hill covered with fine turf, and it may well be doubted whether Cheviots 
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