with usually, now, a white, but formerly an
invariably grey, face. To the eye of an amateur, these
sheep are superior to the Leicester. They are more
active and vigorous, with a splendid fleece, and
better mutton. But, when their nature is closely
examined, there remains no doubt first, that
they have been improved in symmetry and early
maturity while retaining their great size, by
Leicester crosses; and next, that neither pure
nor as a cross, are they so universally useful as
either of what may fairly be called the two
standard breeds. Of course, Cotswold breeders
do not admit this.

The Leicester goes everywhere like the Short
horn bull, and crosses and improves in the cold and
in the warm latitudes. The South Down, superior
in quality of meat, has a less extended range of
usefulness, although a very wide one. The
Cotswold is now an established breed; that is, it
can go on reproducing its improved character
without crosses. Nay, it is said to have been used
formerly to give size to Leicesters, and has
created sub-breeds in Downs, Cotswolds, &c.

The old Teeswater sheep grown in Berwick
and the old Romney Marsh, still found in
natural history books, have lost their
characteristic features under repeated crosses of
Bakewell's new Leicester.

If we travel to the extreme west in Devonshire
and Cornwall, we find the native Bampton
materially changed in character by Leicester
crosses, which, as before mentioned, were
introduced into Cornwall, in the time of Bakewell,
by Mr. Peters, and into Devonshire by the
father of the present celebrated Devon cattle-
breeder, Mr. George Turner, of Barton. The best-
known tribe in the vales and flat lands is a cross
called Bampton Notts, because the Leicester
alliance has deprived them of their original
horns. South Downs have not succeeded in
the moist climate of the Devon hills, but a
future rival of the South Down in quality
and quantity of meat is supposed to be found
in the Exmoor white-faced horned-sheep, of a
mild and tame disposition, which inhabits the
range of hills from North Devon to Somerset,
once fed chiefly for their wool, and lately made
more valuable by the tapping powers of
railroads making them better pasture. If these
have been crossed at all, it has been with
Leicesters. But they seem, like the Downs,
to be capable of most improvement, from
within, by selection. The Dartmoor is an
unimproved sheep, and small. When we leave
Devonshire for Dorsetshire, we come into the great
lamb manufacturers for the London market.
We find an aboriginal breed of horned sheep,
wilder, and longer in the leg, than the Exmoor:
no doubt the breed which Roman soldiers
consumed broiled, and wore as winter coats in
their bleak Dorsetshire encampments. The
Dorset sheep are peculiar for being very prolific;
giving generally two, sometimes three lambs
at a time, like certain Dutch herds, and are
also remarkable for a tendency to breed very
early in the year, and very young; a
tendency which, properly encouraged, gives
house lamb, and meat that passes for house
lamb. These lambs are the result of a first cross
with a South Down ram; after which the ewes,
travelling before lambing to the metropolitan
counties, are themselves fatted on roots and
cake and duly slain. The Dorset will thrive
where the Down would starve. The Dorsets,
like every other British breed, are a much more
uniform and symmetrical sheep, and keep much
more muttonish than they were five-and-twenty
years ago. Still they show all the signs of a
distinct breed; while, as to three out of four of
the long-woolled breeds intermixed with
Bakewell's Leicesters, no one but an expert could
tell where they began and ended. The Wiltshire
and Hampshire Downs, as distinguished from the
Sussex, rejoice in a fine,lively,black-faced, black-
legged, Roman-nosed, large-boned, slowly
maturing, hardy travelling sheep: a sort of Esau
brother to the Sussex Jacob, feeding on the
short Down grass, and extending far and wide
with the help of the eternal turnip. But all
these Down districts have been more or less
invaded and crossed, with the assistance of root
crops, by the more genteel and precocious Sussex
and Cambridgeshire South Down, which has less
bone, and, like royalty, comes of age a year or
two sooner than his Roman-nosed relation.

If we advance into the midland counties,
taking a stretch between Oxfordshire, Bucks,
and Bedfordshire, we find that of late years a
taste and demand has sprung up for crosses, with
the view of combining size and heavy fleece, with
a better quality than a pure long-woolled sheep,
still retaining early maturity. Bakewell's
successors have produced a small, delicate, fat sheep.
At breeding shows, the great prizes are very
properly given for pure blood, which is the
source of all improvement. But the butchers
demand includes quantity and quality. To
answer this demand there has been manufactured
the Down Cotswold, which is the result of a
South Down, a Hampshire Down, and a
Cotswold, with probably a dash of the Leicester.
There has also, within ten years, been produced
a sheep, which, dressed with red-ochre, produced
a great sensation at the late Paris agricultural
show, as " les brebis rouges," and which has been
recently named the " Oxford Down:" a mixture
of Cotswold, Leicester, and South Down, raised
in Oxfordshire and Bedfordshire, a race which
its breeders maintain has at last established
itself as a distinct type. It is larger than
either a Leicester or a Down, with a great fleece,
and very good mutton. Indeed, it would seem
as if (with the exception of the limited area of
the Downs, and dry, chalky, or sandy soils), pure
sheep would rarely be found out of the hands
of ram breeders, and that farmers of arable
land would confine themselves to crosses. The
fashionable South Coast and West-end
London butchers must have pure South Down lamb
and mutton for their customers. In Norfolk and
Suffolk, Down crosses prevail; in Warwickshire,
Leicestershire, and Lincolnshire, the Leicester
and Lincoln blood, and long-woolled character
prevail; and all the manufacturing districts,