fifil 
Common Dolphin (D. delphis) from at least the Essex and 
Norfolk lists. 
Although not included in the body of the list, the domestic 
breeds peculiar to the county are too interesting, and their 
probable origin too suggestive, to bo passed over without a brief 
notice. There is scarcely an isolated district in the United 
Kingdom which has not produced its own peculiar race of domes- 
ticated animals admirably suited to the conditions under which 
they exist. Many of these local races have disappeared in modern 
times by cross-breeding or other causes, and others of a more 
generalized typo have succeeded them. But in a few instances very 
conspicuous breeds are still produced in particular districts : as, for 
instance, tlxo heavy breeds of Lincolnshire and Cambridgeshire 
Horses, and the hardy miniature broods of Exmoor and the Scotch 
Islands, which are very little altered from their original purity by 
artificial breeding. So also with Cattle and Sheep. It seems 
probable that climate and soil, added to unconscious selection 
by the breeder, in the first -place, followed by more intelligent 
cultivation of what was found most suitable to the surroundings, and 
intensified by inheritance — almost imperceptibly", at length produced 
the race which became the recognized favourite of the district in 
which it was developed, and, as such, it would bo valued and 
preserved. Youatt very truly remarks, that, “ in all the different 
districts of the kingdom we find various breeds of Sheep beautifully 
adapted to tho locality which they occupy. No one knows their 
origin ; they are indigenous to tho soil, climate, and pasturage, the 
locality on which they graze ; they seem to have been formed for it 
and by it.”* 
!My excuse for entering at what may be considered undue length 
upon the question of those local races, is, that they must soon 
disappear ; what there is good in them will be absorbed to improve 
some inferior point in the highly composite breeds which now find 
favour ; and many of the qualities which gave them value in the 
estimation of the farmers of the past generation will no longer 
stand them in stead ; artificial food and shelter, and the facilities 
aftbrded by railways of rapid transit, rendering the breeder in the 
present day independent of constitutional peculiarities formerly 
#‘The Sheep’ (1S73), p. 312. 
