THE OLDER LONG-WOOLLED BREEDS OF THE INLAND 
DISTRICTS. 
The Sheep of the marshes and fens are represented by the Lincolnshire and Romney Marsh Breeds already described. Minor 
varieties of the same breeds existed in detached alluvial tracts along the coasts; but they were confined to narrow localities, and 
have now all merged in the races of the adjoining districts. The other class of breeds consists of those which have been naturalized 
in the valleys, plains, and richer tracts of the inland parts. The great district of these breeds is the rich tract of the new red 
sandstone, commencing with the country of the Tees, extends southward by the Yales of York and Trent to the lower valley 
of the Severn, and thence again northward; although, it is to be observed, that it is chiefly in the eastern and midland counties 
that these breeds are found, and that, as we approach to the western limits of the new red sandstone in the north of Staffordshire, 
Cheshire, and Lancashire, the long-woolled breeds are in smaller numbers, and mixed with, or allied to, the ancient breeds of the 
forests, wastes, and chases. 
The most remarkable of the inland breeds was the Old Teeswater, so named from the valley of the beautiful river which 
separates the counties of York and Durham. This valley is exceedingly fertile, though of limited extent; but the breed to which 
it gave a name extended, with some change of characters, northward into Durham, and southward through the greater part of 
Yorkshire, until it merged in the heavy-woolled sheep of the marshes on the one hand, and those of Leicestershire and the other 
midland counties on the other. The true Teeswater Sheep, as reared in their native valley, were of the larger class, very tall, 
hearing a long but not a very thick fleece, inferior only in toughness and length of filaments to that of the ancient Lincolns. The 
wool was, however, more hard, less uniform in the staple, and very coarse towards the extremities. These sheep were of an exceed- 
ingly uncouth form : they had coarse heads, large round haunches, and long stout limbs. They were slow in fattening, and 
required for their support good pastures, with a supply of hay and corn. They were the most prolific of all our races of sheep, 
hearing usually two, and not unfrequently three, lambs at a birth; and they were surpassed by no other sheep in the faculty of 
yielding milk. This coarse and heavy breed has now entirely disappeared in its original form. The New Leicester Breed pro¬ 
gressively extended northward through the Yale of York, and at a still earlier period had been established in Northumberland by 
breeders the contemporaries of Bakewell. Under these circumstances, the older breed of the Tees soon gave place to the new breed 
of the Midland Counties, either by substitution of the one for the other, or by the effects of crossing. At the commencement of 
the present century, a few individual sheep only of the older breed were to be found in the hands of some old farmers unwilling 
to relinquish preconceived opinions and habits. At the present time not one living example, perhaps, remains of the true Old Tees¬ 
water. The only traces of it that present themselves are in the largeness of size of the sheep of particular breeders, who have 
continued to prefer a stock of larger sheep to the more modern variety of higher breeding. 
Proceeding southward, the Teeswater and its varieties gradually merged in the former breeds of Leicestershire and the adjoin¬ 
ing counties. These latter varieties were smaller than the true Teeswater, but of figures equally ungainly. They had coarse 
heads, thick hides, and long lank bodies ; and corresponding with the defects of their external form, was their slowness in fatten¬ 
ing and arriving at the required matitrity. A Ram of the Warwickshire variety is described by Mr Marshall as having “ a 
frame large and remarkably loose, his bone heavy, his legs long and thick, terminating in great splaw feet, his chine as well as his 
rump sharp as a hatchet, his skin rattling on his ribs.” The wool of these sheep varied with the locality, but generally it was 
inferior in weight, shorter in the staple, and more slender in the filaments, than that of the genuine Teeswater. All these varie¬ 
ties of sheep have disappeared, so that not a living example of them is to be found; and their place has been long taken by the 
beautiful breed to which reference has been so frequently made, and of which more especial notice shall be taken in the sequel. 
In the western counties, from the southern division of Staffordshire northward to the Solway Firth, the long-woolled varieties 
were rare, and found only in a few places. They were all of the coarsest kinds of sheep, and inferior in weight of body to those of 
the eastern and midland counties. Some of them lingered until a recent period in the lower parts of Westmoreland and Cumber¬ 
land, and some of them extended across the Solway into the west of Scotland. They have now all disappeared, or left only indis¬ 
tinct traces of their former existence in the flocks of a few careless Sheep-masters. It is not known whether Scotland originally 
possessed a native race of Long-woolled Sheep, but sheep of this kind were early in the last century introduced into the south¬ 
eastern border counties, and, about the time of the American war, were largely mixed in blood with the improved New Leicester. 
Another district of Long-woolled Sheep is found in England just beyond the tract of the lias and oolite limestone, in the 
counties of Devon and Somerset. One variety of them inhabited the southern part of Devonshire from the Yale of Honiton west- 
