The Economist says:—A party of Oxfordshire farmers met at Oxford lately to give a distinctive name to the cross-bred sheep which have of late years been known as "Down-Cotswolds." It seems that many farmers in that county kept this sort of sheep, and they contend that having bred them from cross-breeds only for the last twenty years, they have, according to the dictum of the late Lord Spencer, obtained a fixed type of sheep. The}' reported Lord Spencer to have said "that if they continued a breed for four or five generations it was so fixed that nothing could move it if they stuck to it." They agreed to call their sheep " Oxfordshire Downs," and it seems they are to be regarded as a short-woolled breed. We have seen some very good fat sheep shown at the Smithfield Club show as Down-Cotswolds, which were very good cross-bred sheep, but they were certainly not short-woolled sheep. If there be such a sheep formed, it must be,We believe, by selecting the animals which partake most of the Down parents for reproduction.
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Bibliographic details
Colonist, Issue 26, 19 January 1858, Page 2
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179
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Colonist, Issue 26, 19 January 1858, Page 2
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