Having entirely exhausted the Yo Semite, he is now at work on a grand picture of a Southdown Ewe, and will soon commence a view of his studio,at sunrise.

He called them his little Southdowns, and he said he loved his sheep, for they were the most gentle and inoffensive creatures that he had on his farm.

"Yes; I keep those few Southdowns for their fine quality.

I got up and put my head on his arm, and he went on: "By and by, the Southdowns will be changed up here, and the Shropshires will go down to the orchard.

"Come up here, you Southdown with the bare belly," says the man in the wagon.

"How are your Southdowns looking, Jim?" says the vicar.

A gigot of Leicester, Cheviot, or Southdown mutton makes a beautiful 'boiled leg of mutton,' which is prized the more the fatter it is, as this part of the carcass is never overloaded with fat.

For a small family, the black-faced mutton is preferable; for a large, the Southdown and Cheviot.

The Leicester and Southdowns afford the best mutton-chops.

When the piece is large, as of Southdown or Cheviot, the gristly part of the ribs may be divided from the true ribs, and helped separately.

The shoulder is best from a large carcass of Southdown, Cheviot, or Leicester, the black-faced being too thin for the purpose; and it was probably because English mutton is usually large that the practice of removing it originated.

The world, it seemed to one of them, was uncreate, gone, and non-existent; only this remainedthe shadowy downs stretching on every side to infinity, and three shadowy riders plodding across them; all shadowy, all unreal until a bell-wether got up under the horses' heads, and with a confused rush and scurry of feet a hundred Southdowns scampered into the grey unknown.

The results obtained from these operations convinced his son that more mutton and better wool could be made per acre from the Southdown than from any other breed, upon nine-tenths of the arable land of England, where the sheep are regularly folded, especially where the land is poor.

Having decided in his own mind that the Southdowns were preferable to every other breed, for the two properties mentioned, he went into Sussex, their native county, and purchased the best rams and ewes that could be obtained of the principal breeders, regardless of expense, and never made a cross from any other breed afterwards.

If, therefore, a stock-raiser has not decided to drive his Shorthorn cow or Southdown ewe immediately from the Fair-grounds to the butcher's shambles, he runs an imminent risk of losing entirely the use and value of the animal.

At the Exhibition of 1841, at Liverpool, he won three out of four of the prizes offered by the Royal Agricultural Society for Southdowns, or any other short-woolled sheep; two out of four offered at Bristol, in 1842, and three out of four offered at Derby, in 1843.

" At nearly every subsequent national exhibition, Mr. Webb carried off the best prizes for Southdowns.

Having, by a long course of scientific observations and experiments, fixed the qualities he desired to give his Southdowns; having brought them to the highest perfection, he now adopted a system which would most widely and cheaply diffuse the race thus cultivated all over the civilized world.

An eminent authority has stated that "it would be difficult, if not impossible, to find a Southdown flock of any reputation, in any country in the world, not closely allied with the Babraham flock."

On this occasion the Duke of Richmond, an hereditary and eminent breeder of Southdowns in their native county, bid a hundred guineas for a ram lamb, which Mr. Webb himself bought in.

The most splendid ram in the flock went to the United States, being knocked down to Mr. J. C. Taylor, of Holmdale, New Jersey; who is doing so much to Americanise the Southdowns.

Most of those I saw were Southdowns and Hampshires, pure or crossed, with here and there a Leicester.

The growth of the little bull-headed mites, after being turned into the river-pasture, is wonderfulmore rapid than that of lambs of the Southdown breed.

BINNS, the butler, who himself dabbled in aphorism, and had sucked wisdom from the privy perusal of Sir JOHN's note-book, had laid before them a dish on which reposed a small but well-boiled leg of one that had trod the Southdowns but a week before in all the pride of lusty life.

"Yes," he said to the Doctor in his vexation, "one would really think that by force of eating Southdown mutton my poor brother had acquired the brains of one of his own rams!