. Mammals of other lands;. Mammals. 204 THE LIVING ANIMALS OF THE WORLD sheep. Later a large heavy sheep, with long wool and a massive body, was bred in the Midlands, and called the Leicester Long-wool. This sheep gives a great cut of wool, and much coarse mutton. The CHEVIOT Sheep, originally bred on the hills of that name, is now one of the mainstays of the Scotch moun- tain farmer. The Cheviots eat the grass on the high hillsides, while the Black- FACED Highland Sheep live on the heather higher up. The Suffolk, Oxford, Hampshire, and other " Down" sheep are larger breeds than the
. Mammals of other lands;. Mammals. 204 THE LIVING ANIMALS OF THE WORLD sheep. Later a large heavy sheep, with long wool and a massive body, was bred in the Midlands, and called the Leicester Long-wool. This sheep gives a great cut of wool, and much coarse mutton. The CHEVIOT Sheep, originally bred on the hills of that name, is now one of the mainstays of the Scotch moun- tain farmer. The Cheviots eat the grass on the high hillsides, while the Black- FACED Highland Sheep live on the heather higher up. The Suffolk, Oxford, Hampshire, and other " Down" sheep are larger breeds than the South Down. The RoMNEY Marsh Sheep are a heavy long-woolled breed. The ExMOORS are small heather-sheep like those of Wales, and the Soa and St. Kilda Sheep, which are often four-horned, the smallest of all. The maintenance of flocks is now almost an essential part of English agriculture on all chalk lands, which comprise a very large percentage of the southern counties. On the chalk downs the flocks are the great fertilisers of the soil. Every night the sheep are folded on the fields which are destined to produce corn in the following year. The manure so left on the soil ensures a good crop, with no expense for carting the fertiliser from the farmyard, as is the case with manure made by oxen kept in straw-yards. On the South Downs, Oxfordshire Downs or Chiltern Hills, Salisbury Plain, and the Berkshire Downs the farms have been mainly carried on by the aid of the flocks. Where these are no longer kept the land reverts to grass, and the growing of corn ceases. On the coarse, new-sown grasses cattle take the place of sheep, and an inferior style of farming, like the ranches of South America, replaces the. PhM hj J. T. NiTui LONK RAM This is a photograph of the largest sheep on record careful and highly skilled agriculture of Old England. In the far north of Scotland cross- bred sheep are now reared and fed in winter on turnips, which will grow luxuriantly where the climate is too
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Keywords: ., bookauthorco, bookcentury1900, bookdecade1910, booksubjectmammals
