704 VARIOUS BREEDS OF SHEEP IN GREAT BRITAIN. 
two parent breeds. In some of the best-farmed districts of 
Wiltshire, Hampshire, and Berkshire, they have gradually 
displaced the South Downs, and have in themselves afforded 
another distinct breed for crossing with the long-woolled 
sheep. Their leading characteristics are, as compared with 
the South Down, an increased size, equal maturity, and a 
hardier constitution. The face and head are larger and 
coarser in their character ; the frame is heavier throughout ; 
the carcase is long, roomy, though less symmetrical than the 
South Down, and the wool of a coarser though longer staple. 
Their fattening propensity is scarcely equal to that of the 
South Down. These points have all received great attention 
lately from the breeders; and the improved Hampshire Down 
now possesses, both in shape, qualitity of wool, aptitude to 
fatten, and early maturity, all the qualities for which the 
pure South Down has been so long and so justly celebrated. 
The lambs are usually dropped early and fed for the markets 
as lamb, or kept until the following spring, when, if well fed, 
they weigh from 80 to 100 lbs. and command a good market. 
The Hampshire Downs are used like the South Downs, for 
the purpose of crossing with other breeds; being hardier in 
constitution they are perhaps better calculated for the 
northern districts, where the climate is sometimes very severe. 
Norfolk Down . — This is one of the rapidly declining breeds, 
having been gradually forced to give way to the superior 
merits of the South Down. It is now very rarely to be met, 
with, and is confined entirely to one or two flocks in Norfolk 
and in Suffolk. At the beginning of the present century 
when the sandy wastes of the Eastern Counties were being 
brought into improved tillage cultivation, the hardy nature 
and constitution of the Norfolk Downs rendered them very 
suitable for a country where they had to travel daily back- 
wards and forwards from a distant fold, and where the herb- 
age was both scant and inferior in quality. They are 
horned, and had black faces and legs ; rather low in the 
shoulders and neck, and generally deficient in those points 
which we are accustomed to look for in our improved breeds. 
At the same time they were good doers ; fattened early, even 
on poor keep, and produced excellent mutton, with a large 
proportion of loose fat, which even now renders them favorites 
with the butcher when they are met with. As the cultiva- 
tion of those counties advanced, the comparative merits of 
the district breed and of the South Downs became more 
decided ; and in some trials made on an extensive scale by 
the Earl of Albemarle and others, it was found that the 
latter consumed a smaller quantity of food for their size. 
