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Illustrations of the Breeds of the Domestic Animals of 
THE British Islands. Part 11. By David Low, Esq., 
Professor of Agriculture in the University of Edinburgh. 
We had intended that a review of this number of Professor 
Low’s splendid work on British Cattle should have appeared in 
our last number, but a sudden and unexpected influx of matter 
connected with the veterinary art at Edinburgh prevented it. 
We now turn to it with increasing pleasure, for we have had time, 
again and again, to peruse it, and to study the beauties of the 
plates. 
We have nothing to do with the hypothesis as to the factitious 
origin of the sheep, for to him this brochure is devoted. We only 
know that he was coeval with the creation of man and the descent 
from the ark; and that there is reason to believe, making allow¬ 
ance for the effect of time and climate, cultivation and neglect and 
caprice, he is the same now as in the earliest periods of his 
domestication. 
We are first presented with a ram of the original breed from 
the islands at the north of the Pentland Firth. The soil is cold 
and wet; scarcely a tree is to be found, or even a plant beyond the 
heath that covers the soil. He looks like the inhabitant of such a 
place, feeding on sea-weed and on fish, when nothing else can be 
obtained; furiously contending with his companions, and the male 
seeking out the female and her young one, in order to destroy them 
—an effectual but horrible way of preventing the multiplication of 
their numbers beyond the means of subsistence. In the same plate 
is pourtrayed an ewe of the same extraction, but of a more modern 
breed, from the Island of Rousay. In the second plate we are 
introduced to the Aborigines of the higher Welsh mountains in 
the neighbourhood of Glamorgan. They seek the summits of the 
mountains, vault rather than run, and feed on the dry aromatic 
plants of the mountains in preference to the herbage of the lower 
valleys. These are one variety of the sheep whose carcasses arc 
so much prized in the metropolitan market. By way of contrast, 
portraits of two improved sheep of this breed are given. The 
effect is considerable, and on the lower ranges of mountains might 
he worth trying on a large scale. As for those of the higher 
ranges, there is nothing about them to induce the proprietor to 
expend much time or capital in cultivating them. 
The soft-woolled, white-nosed sheep, so many of whom are driven 
to the London market, figures in the next plate; and the old Rad¬ 
nor sheep, with her long and soft hair, so admirablv adapted to the 
nianufacture of flannels, occupy the third plate. 
