VARIOUS BREEDS OR SHEEP IN GREAT BRITAIN. 703 
useful and honorable career of some fifty years with the 
satisfactory conviction that he had obtained for his favorite 
breed a reputation and character which would secure them a 
place as the first of our short-woolled sheep. The South 
Down sheep of the present day are without horns, and with 
dark brown faces and legs ; the size and weight have been 
increased ; the fore quarters improved in width and depth ; 
the back and loins have become broader and the ribs more 
curved, so as to form a straight and level back ; the hind 
quarters are square and full, the tail well set on, and the 
limbs shorter and finer in the bone. These results are due 
to the great and constant care which has been bestowed on 
the breed by Ellman and his cotemporaries, as well as by 
his successors, whose flocks fully sustain the character of the 
improved breed. The sheep, though fine in form and sym- 
metrical in appearance, are very hardy, keeping up their con- 
dition on moderate pastures, and readily adapting themselves 
to the different districts and system of farming in which they 
are now met with. They are very docile, and thrive well 
even when folded on the artificial pastures of an arable farm.* 
Their disposition to fatten enables them to be brought into 
the market at twelve and fifteen months old, when they 
average 80 lbs. each. At two years old they will weigh 
from 100 to 120 lbs. each. The meat is of fine quality, 
and always commands the highest price in the market. The 
ewes are very prolific, and are excellent mothers, com- 
monly rearing 120 to 130 lambs to the 100 ewes. The fleece, 
which closely covers the body, produces the most valuable of 
our native wools. It is short in the staple, fine and curl- 
ing, with spiral ends, and is used for carding purposes 
generally. 
This is one of the breeds in which the breeding of rams, 
both for sale and for hire, forms a peculiar feature, as indi- 
cative of the value generally assigned to the breed, both for 
its own intrinsic qualities and for the advantages it offers for 
crossing with other breeds. 
Hampshire Downs . — This rapidly increasing breed of sheep 
appears to be the result of a recent cross between the pure 
South Down and the old horned white face sheep of Hamp- 
shire and Wiltshire, by which the hardworking, though fine 
quality of the former is combined with the superior size and 
constitution of the latter. The breed was commenced at the 
early part of the present century ; and by a system of judi- 
cious crossing now possesses the leading characters of the 
* The farm of Mr. Jonas Webb, of Babraham, is mostly under tillage 
cultivation. 
