The Sheep Stock of Gloucestershire. 
37 
Beman, Wells, Slatter, Fletcher, Beale, Brown, Walker, King, 
Tombs, and Gillett were among the most prominent prize- 
winners. 
It was about this time that the supremacy of the Cots wold 
sheep in their native district began to be disputed by what 
was originally a cross-bred sheep, the product, namely, of 
mating a Cotswold ram with a Hampshire (or in some cases a 
Sussex Down) ewe. 
The prize essay of Yol. 15, First Series, of the Royal 
Agricultural Journal, by the late Mr. Clare Sewell Reade, 
written in 1854, contains an excellent description of the 
Cotswold of that day. He also gives a good account of the 
cross-bred sheep, destined in the course of the next thirty 
years to largely displace it as the general breed of the country. 
He being such a competent authority of the time, I cannot clo 
better than quote his words at some length. 
The Cotswolds, sometimes called Gloucesters, or New 
Oxfords, are described as a “ hardy, heavy, most useful breed 
of sheep, gradually and most desirably rising in public 
estimation The improvement which has been 
effected in these sheep within the last twenty years is 
surprising ; they may be indebted to the delicate Leicesters 
for diminishing their coarseness, producing aptitude to fatten, 
and rendering the fleece of finer quality. But they have not 
lost their gigantic size or hardiness, which so fits them for cold 
and elevated situations. As a farmers’ sheep they are much 
superior to any other long-wools, producing a great weight of 
mutton and a heavy fleece at a very early age. Tegs at 
fourteen months old will commonly weigh 10 stone, or 80 lb. 
per sheep, and clip 8 or 9 lb. of wool. Numerous instances 
might be cited of a much heavier weight, but the above is a 
fair average. The weight on record of some Cotswolds appears 
almost fabulous : two rams killed in one year at Middle Aston 
weighed 84 lb. per quarter, and last Christmas three ewes 
from the same flock only missed 3 lb. of averaging 60 lb. 
per quarter. 
“ The principal fault found with the Cotswolds is that 
their meat gives too much to the grease-pot and too little to 
the table ; the mutton is a penny a pound less in value than 
that of the Downs, but the extra weight compensates for 
the deficiency.” 
After enumerating the principal Southdown flocks kept 
chiefly by the “ nobility and gentry,” the writer goes on 
to say : — 
“ But the present ‘ glory of the country,’ the most profitable 
sheep to the producer, the butcher and the consumer, are the 
‘ Half-Breds,’ better described as ‘Down Cotswold.’ The 
