Undoubtedly changes have taken place even here, some very great, chiefly
during the last, or from the late eighteenth century. Changes both in
the land and the animal life, wild and domestic. Of the losses in wild
bird life there will be something to say in another chapter; they relate
chiefly to the extermination of the finest species, the big bird,
especially the soaring bird, which is now gone out of all this wide
Wiltshire sky. As a naturalist I must also lament the loss of the old
Wiltshire breed of sheep, although so long gone. Once it was the only
breed known in Wilts, and extended over the entire county; it was a big
animal, the largest of the fine-woolled sheep in England, but for looks
it certainly compared badly with modern downland breeds and possessed,
it was said, all the points which the breeder, or improver, was against.
Thus, its head was big and clumsy, with a round nose, its legs were long
and thick, its belly without wool, and both sexes were horned. Horns,
even in a ram, are an abomination to the modern sheep-farmer in Southern
England. Finally, it was hard to fatten. On the other hand it was a
sheep which had been from of old on the bare open downs and was modified
to suit the conditions, the scanty feed, the bleak, bare country, and
the long distances it had to travel to and from the pasture ground. It
was a strong, healthy, intelligent animal, in appearance and character
like the old original breed of sheep on the pampas of South America,
which I knew as a boy, a coarse-woolled sheep with naked belly, tall and
hardy, a greatly modified variety of the sheep introduced by the Spanish
colonist three centuries ago. At all events the old Wiltshire sheep had
its merits, and when the Southdown breed was introduced during the late
eighteenth century the farmer viewed it with disfavour; they liked their
old native animal, and did not want to lose it. But it had to go in
time, just as in later times the Southdown had to go when the Hampshire
Down took its place--the breed which is now universal, in South Wilts at