64 
Shropshire Sheep. 
white from white to black in different shades, the legs the same 
colour, wool fine, closely and compactly covering the carcass. 
The better breed of these sheep are similar to the South Down 
and not inferior, their general fault being a want of thickness 
in proportion to their length. This is confirmed by a Lincoln- 
shire grazier, who in 1833 wrote thus : — u The Cannock Heath 
sheep are bred upon an extensive waste so named in Stafford- 
shire. They are generally grey-faced without horns, bear fine 
wool and from many points of similitude between them and 
the Southdown it has been thought that they have been 
derived from the same stock. The bone, however, is coarser, 
nor do they possess the same beauty and compactness as the 
Southdown. In some of the neighbouring counties to 
Herefordshire, both in England and Wales, there is a breed of 
sheep very much resembling the Ryelands, known as the 
Shropshire Morfe. They bear wool of fine quality, generally 
have white faces and legs, though sometimes are a little freckled, 
are light in the bone and have small clean limbs. There are 
two species, which from inattention to the breeds, are often 
blended, the one polled and the other having small light 
crooked horns.” 
A report to the Board of Agriculture in 1796 speaks of 
Sheep on a Common near Market Drayton in the north of 
the county of Shropshire, and at Kinver Hill, and mentions 
the name of Dyott of Freeford, near Lichfield, as an early 
breeder. 
The Farmers' Magazine alluding to the 1857 Salisbury 
Meeting of the Royal Agricultural Society, contains the 
following “ The disposition of the Royal Agricultural 
Society to recognise more generally the different breeds of 
sheep in England by instituting a prize at the last meeting 
(Salisbury) for any short-wooled sheep not Southdown, has 
already had a beneficial tendency, inasmuch as it has been the 
means of bringing more immediately before the public a breed 
which even now is but partially known, and which but a few 
years ago was in utter obscurity. The original Shropshire can 
be traced to the Longmynd and other adjacent mountains in 
mid-Shropshire and in its improved state may be thus 
described : a small, but wide and well-formed head with a 
good countenance, a dark grey and somewhat speckled face 
with a whitening tendency towards the ears, somewhat erect 
and thickset in the neck, short but symmetrically fine in the leg, 
broad in the shoulder, with very deep, full and well-developed 
brisket, rather long and particularly broad and level in the 
back, with ribs well covered and of a rounded tendency, low 
in the flank with exceedingly heavy hindquarters and a leg very 
thick, round and low. The average weight at sixteen months 
