104 
Tour in £ln gland. 
than thirty thousand South Down sheep, dotting 
She hills in every direction, attended by their 
faithful shepherds and dogs. These were the 
indigenous sheep of the country, the unim¬ 
proved South Downs, and though a hardy 
thrifty race, and making the best of mutton, 
their carcasses are light, and saving the deep 
twist and heavy quarters, are rather ill shaped 
and deficient in the requisites of a superior feed¬ 
ing animal; it was wonderful therefore to see 
in the flocks now exhibited to us by Mr Webb, 
what an improvement, science, skill, and per¬ 
severance on the part of man can make in the 
forms of the animal creation; verily they are as 
clay in the hands of the potter, to be moulded 
and fashioned according to his will 
Mr Webb is a tenant farmer of some five 
hundred acres, of what we should call very 
poor land, on the estate of the Hon. W. Adeane 
of Babraham Abbey; but this land he was ma¬ 
naging with admirable skill, and by means of 
his stock, manures drawn from other sources, 
and a systematic rotation of crops, he was ob¬ 
taining a product of grass, roots, and grain from 
it, that would quite astonish the farmers of some 
of our own fertile river bottoms. We think 
however, that he has great advantages in breed¬ 
ing sheep, for in addition to his own large flock, 
he has the management and selections of his 
lords, and also his brothers some three 
miles distant on another farm of the estate, and 
certainly, when we take the size of these su¬ 
perior animals into consideration, their fineness 
of point, beauty and perfection of form, great 
weight and closeness of fleece, we cannot but 
admire them, and feel, as if their improvers 
from Ellman down, have conferred a lasting 
benefit upon their country, and are better de¬ 
serving the honors of knighthood at the hands 
of their sovereigns, than half of the baronets 
through the land that have hitherto received 
the Royal accolade. 
Mr Webb’s sale of mutton at markets, and of 
choice animals to breeders at home and abroad, 
is extensive, besides having an annual ram let¬ 
ting for the season, which he does by auction 
in the month of July. What his income from 
these are, it would have been impertinent to in¬ 
quire, but it is doubtless a large amount. The 
sire of the buck that we purchased for Mr. 
Rotch, was hired that season by the Duke of 
Newcastle for one hundred guineas, ($500), 
and we suspect that the average of his lettings 
was full 30Z. per head, which probably yielded 
him an income of at least $6000 per annum 
from this source alone, a sum, the receipt of 
which, would rather astonish any tenant farmer 
in America. But Mr Webb excels in breed¬ 
ing sheep, and at the great annual show of the 
Royal Agricultural Society; the past year at 
Liverpool, he was so fortunate as to carry of! 
all the prizes, except one, for South Downs, al¬ 
though he had to contend with such distin¬ 
guished breeders as the duke of Richmond, 
Messrs. Ellman, Grantham, Carver, Gatlin, 
Barnard, Lugar, Whitmore, Hayward and 
Crisp. Yet this by no means lessens the value 
of these gentlemen’s flocks in our estimation, 
besides several others that we had the pleasure 
of looking at during various journies over 
England, who did not show. To give an idea 
of the weight of Mr. Webb’s animals, the buck 
selected for Mr. Rotch, though only six months 
old, weighed 152lbs. on the scales; Bishop 
Mead’s, eighteen months old, 248lbs., and Mr 
Stevenson’s of same age, 2541bs., while a wether, 
exhibited at Cambridge on Christmas-day 1840, 
weighed dressed with the head on 200lbs., 
aside from yielding 28lbs. of rough tallow. 
The average weight of his wethers however, 
at eighteen to twenty months old, is but about 
30 to 35lbs. per quarter. The bucks shear 
from 9 to lllbs., and the average shearing of 
the whole flock is 61b. 15oz., and of a quality 
of wool that we thought better than the gene¬ 
rality of South Downs. The fleece is close 
and compact, and we should think would resist 
rain, sleet and snow, nearly as well as the best 
Merinos. 
The management of these flocks is much 
like that of sheep mentioned in our second let¬ 
ter in Berkshire, and we do not think it worth 
while to enter upon minutia at the present mo¬ 
ment. They are very hardy and are never 
housed in winter, but lie in the open fields and 
are fed upon hay, with cut turnips, sugar beet 
or mangel wurzel. In the summer they are 
taken to rather a poor pasture by day, at a dis¬ 
tant part of the farm for change and exercise, 
and towards night are brought near home, and 
folded on vetches, clover or rape. The lambs, 
after weaning are turned into fair pasture, and fed 
about a pint each per day, of beans, oil cake, 
or some kind of grain. Mr Webb says, he is 
an advocate for good feeding, and that a good 
animal always pays well for it. This is our 
doctrine, and if people want South Downs to 
starve, they had better, take up with the small¬ 
est of the old unimproved race.* 
* These are exceedingly hardy, and will live on 
the forest downs (high chalky hills), and on miser¬ 
able heaths, like Bagshot, where the grass is coarse 
and sour, and the ground is thickly overspread with 
Canada and other thistles and prickly shrubs. We 
acknowledge that the South Downs are very favorite 
sheep with us, and we make these precautionary re¬ 
marks about sheep, lest it should be thought that wa 
were saying too much in their favor. We will now 
add, that when we looked at Mr. Smith’s flock, of 
Ohio, in March, they were in fine condition, and with 
the addition of a little hay, had lived entirely in the 
