File:Sheep, breeds and management (1893) (14595246619).jpg

Identifier: sheepbreedsmanag00wrig (find matches)
Title: Sheep, breeds and management
Year: 1893 (1890s)
Authors: Wrightson, John
Subjects: Sheep
Publisher: London, Vinton
Contributing Library: UMass Amherst Libraries
Digitizing Sponsor: Boston Library Consortium Member Libraries

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general appearance the breed resembles theheavy long-woolled Lincoln race. Fine specimens are to beseen at our great shows, not only from the true Marsh dis-trict, but also from Sittingbourne and other localities of goodland, of higher position. The Devon Longwool. This breed has been known for centuries in the neighbour-hood of Bampton or Bathampton, a market town and parishin the hundred of the same name in Devonshire. The oldtown stands in a pleasant vale, and the houses are built ofstone, and are irregularly scattered over a space extending toabout half a mile, near the river Batherm. In BelVs Gazetteer^published in 1836, we read Many sheep are fed in theneighbourhood; they are of a large size, and of an uncom-monly fine quality, from the excellence of the pastures.Twenty years later Professor Wilson wrote, It is very difficultto find the pure Bampton unmixed with other blood: a fewonly remaining in Devonshire and West Somerset. The original Bampton Nott was a large-framed, heavy-
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THE DEVON LONGWOOL. 37 woolled sheep, white-faced and hornless. It appears to havebeen an out-lying branch of the long-wooUed sheep of thecountry which spread from the Tees to the Severn, followingthe flat tracts and undulating ground of the new red sand-stone north and west of the oolitic formation. It was no doubtfrom this breed, extending from the Tees mouth to Warwick-shire and Worcestershire, that the new Leicester itself wasderived, and, if this surmise is correct, the subsequent im-provement of the allied long-woolled races by the Leicesterwould scarcely be a cross, but rather the introduction of aselected strain of a similar origin to their own. Whateverview we may be disposed to adopt, there is no doubt that theold Bampton breed has been modified by repeated Leicesterand Lincoln crosses. The Devon South Hams were found from the Vale ofHoniton to the borders of Dartmoor. Originally they hadbrown faces and legs, but in other respects resembled theheavy Romney Marsh breed. These

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