woolled Irish; the English forest breeds com- 
prise the Dartmoor and the Exmoor; the old 
upland breeds comprise the old Norfolk, the 
Penistone, the old Wiltshire, the Dorset, the 
Somerset, the Portland, and the Ryeland ; the 
mountain breeds comprise the blackfaced heath, 
the Herdwick, and the Cheviot ; the down breeds 
comprise the Southdown and the Hampshire 
down; and the long-woolled breeds comprise the 
Lincoln, the Romney Marsh, the Bampton-Nott, 
the Cotswold, the new Oxford, and the Leicester. 
The Shetland sheep are small handsome ani- 
mals, with short fine fleeces. They comprise 
numerous subvarieties, and have been somewhat 
largely crossed, in many places, with breeds 
from the nearest parts of Continental Hurope ; 
yet they possess a quite marked family character, 
and may all, more or less, be readily ascribed 
to a common origin. They are wild, active, and 
very hardy; and have slender limbs and short 
broad tails; and either are hornless or have short 
and often straight and upright horns similar to 
those of the goat. Some are white, some black, 
some brown, many grey, and many curiously 
streaked or otherwise marked with intermixtures 
of black and white. Their wool is soft and cot- 
tony, and adapted to very fine manufactures, 
and has, in some instances, been found to rival 
the merino wool, “They have three different 
successions of wool yearly, two of which resemble 
long hair, more than wool, and are termed by 
the common people fors and scudda. When the 
wool begins to loosen in the roots, which gener- 
ally happens about the month of February, the 
hairs or scudda spring up; and when the wool is 
carefully plucked off, the tough hairs continue 
fast, until the new wool grows up about a quar- 
ter of an inch in length, then they gradually 
wear off ; and when the new fleece has acquired 
about two months’ growth, the rough hairs, 
termed fors, spring up, and keep root, until the 
proper season for pulling it arrives, when it is 
plucked off along with the wool, and separated 
from it at dressing the fleece, by an operation 
called forcing. The scudda remains upon the 
skin of the animal, as if it were a thick coat, a 
fence against the inclemency of the seasons, 
which provident Nature has furnished for sup- 
plying the want of the fleece. The silver-grey 
wool is thought to be the finest; but the black, 
the white, the mourat or brown, is very little 
inferior; though the pure white is certainly 
the most valuable for all the finer purposes in 
which combing wool can be used.” The Orkney 
sheep are radically the same as the Shetland 
sheep, but have been more frequently mixed 
with other breeds, particularly with the Dutch, 
and have not so fine wool. 
The Hebridean sheep possesses considerable 
affinity to the Shetland sheep, but is among the 
smallest of its kind, and of comparatively little 
value. Its shape is thin and lank; its horns are 
usually short and straight; its tail is very short ; 
<a 
SHEEP. 
its face and legs are white; and its wool is 
. . 5 Ld 
sometimes bluish-grey, sometimes brown, some- 
times deep russet, and sometimes a combina- 
tion of all these colours. The carcase, on the 
average, does not weigh more than about 20 or 
22 lbs.; and the wool is proportionally small in 
quantity, and has different qualities on different 
parts of the same fleece, but, under favourable 
circumstances of pasture and management, is 
very fine and has a softness similar to that of 
the Shetland sheep.—A remnant of an ancient 
race of sheep occurs in several of the northern 
counties of Scotland, characterised by yellowness 
of face and legs, and by dishevelledness and un- 
equal quality of fleece, part of it being fine and 
part coarse. 
The Welsh mountain sheep are similar in size 
to the Hebridean sheep, and have horns and || 
habits similar to those of goats. They are wild 
and very active, and frequent the highest parts 
of the mountains, and feed largely on alpine aro- 
matic herbage. They have black hair on their 
face and legs, and a ridge of hair on the back, 
throat, and dewlap; and their fleece is of various 
colours,—principally black, brown, and grey.— 
The Welsh soft-woolled sheep are also a moun- 
tain breed, and only about one-sixth or one-fifth 
larger than the preceding breed; but they are 
much more valuable, and far more generally dif- 
fused, and may be regarded as the distinctive 
breed of Wales. They have exceedingly active 
habits, and cannot be confined within any low 
or ordinary enclosures. Their general form is 
slender; their hind-quarters are long, and some- 
‘what similar to those of the deer; their neck is 
thin, and is more arched backward than that of 
any other variety of sheep; their coat contains 
some mixture of hair, though less than that of 
other mountain breeds; their throat is so hairy 
as to have a sort of beard; their fleece weighs 
between one and two pounds, and is long-woolled, 
and furnishes the material for the well-known 
Welsh flannel; and their flesh is of excellent 
quality, and has long been celebrated under the 
name of Welsh mutton. A subvariety of this 
breed, of a larger size and better fed, occurs in 
Anglesea.—The old Radnor sheep possesses some 
resemblance to the Welsh soft-woolled sheep, 
and a greater one to the Welsh mountain sheep, 
but has a larger size and a better shape than 
either, and is probably a mixed offspring of the 
two enlarged and improved by feeding on better 
pastures.—The new Radnor sheep is an improved 
subvariety of the old, and has been crossed with ° 
the Shropshire and other breeds, and is often the 
only sheep meant when farmers of the present 
day speak of the Radnor. 
The Wicklow sheep inhabit principally the 
Wicklow mountains on the east coast of Ireland; 
and they considerably resemble the mountain 
and the soft-woolled sheep of Wales, in both form 
and habit. They are small and wild; and com- 
prise a comparatively small-sized and coarse- 
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