ABSTRACT
Y the end of the eighteenth century certain breeds of cattle B -notably the Shorthorn and the Dishley Longhorn-had become dispersed far beyond the boundaries of their native districts. In the same way a few types of sheep were transgressing their ancient limits to form, by crossing, entirely new breeds or to populate the sheep pastures of foreign counties. In southern Britain, some of the best of the mutton breeds, among them the Dorset and the Wiltshire Horn, had long been kept in many counties for making early meat for the London market. From the Midlands, Bakewell's New Leicester rams began in the last quarter of the century to be taken far afield-even to Cornwall and to Caithness-to cross upon the local sheep. Perhaps the most important and spectacular of all livestock migrations of the period was the way the shortwoolled Cheviot and the coarsewoolled Blackface (alias Linton or Heath)l were leapfrogging
northwards from the Pennines and the Cheviots to expel the ancient Scots whiteface type from the whole of the Scottish mainland. In a contemporary improving, but not yet migratory, movement the old sheep of the South Downs were being turned into a great new breed; and royal and gentlemanly breeders were trying to acclimatize the Merino. The thirty years from 1770 to 1799 were momentous in the sheep world.
