Clun Forest Sheep. 155 
of rendering it effeminate or weakly. The horns are being bred 
out. 
It may be useful to add, for the information of readers who are 
not acquainted with the district, that the Hundred of Clun forms 
the South-West corner of Shropshire, being bordered on the South 
by Radnorshire, and on the West by Montgomeryshire. It was 
chiefly within this Hundred that the Forest district, which was 
named after the little town of Clun, and of which the small 
town of Newcastle-on-Clun was fairly central, was situated. The 
Forest district is now much curtailed, and is practically all 
enclosed ; but at the beginning of the century there were 1 2,000 
acres of common land, which were in an uncultivated state, affording 
pasturage to a large number of sheep. The greater part of this 
land lies at a high elevation, and the hills afford some of the most 
picturesque scenery in the county. The turf was good but variable, 
and the alternate hill and dale made the locality a typical sheep 
run. The grass-land in the valley of the Clun is equal almost to 
any in England, and the arable land adjoining is excellent. There 
is much red land in the district, though occasionally the clay soils 
are light coloured. The hills are generally of red sandstone, and in 
some places good building stone is quarried. The Clun Forest 
breed of sheep inhabited the Forest and common land, from which 
they took their name. The Radnor Forest sheep have been pro- 
duced on the neighbouring Black Hills, and still have a great 
tendency to produce horns, and are somewhat smaller than the 
Clun Forest sheep and have darker-coloured faces. The Longmynd 
was an inferior indigenous breed with wide heads, black faces, 
narrow backs, and of poorer quality throughout. 
Shropshire, with its many soils, its hills, and its forests, once 
possessed more varieties of sheep than any other county in the king- 
dom, or perhaps than any other tract of land of its size ine wjrld. 
It has managed to meet the depression that has settled on the agri- 
cultural industry better than almost any other county, chiefly 
because of the excellence of its sheep, and particularly on account 
of the breed to which the county has given its name. The Shrop- 
shire breed has attained a world -wide repute, and certainly ranks 
high among the best. Nevertheless, in the Clun Forest sheep there 
appear to be all the essentials necessary to produce a breed which, 
if judiciously developed, cannot fail to add to the renown of a county 
which already occupies a leading place in the annals of sheep 
breeding. 
W. J. Maldest. 
