These common sheep yielded a wool suitable only for the coarsest fabrics, averaging, in the hands of good farmers, from three to three and a half pounds of wool to the fleece. They were slow in arriving at maturity, compared with the improved English breeds, and yielded, when fully grown, from ten to fourteen pounds of a middling quality of mutton to the quarter. They were usually long-legged, light in the fore-quarter, and narrow on the breast and back; although some rare instances might be found of flocks with the short legs, and some approximation to the general form of the improved breeds. They were excellent breeders, often rearing, almost entirely destitute of care, and without shelter, one hundred per cent. of lambs; and in small flocks, a still larger proportion. These, too, were usually dropped in March, or the earlier part of April. Restless in their disposition, their impatience of restraint almost equalled that of the untamed Argali, from which they were descended; and in many sections of the country it was common to see from twenty to fifty of them roving, with little regard to enclosures, over the possessions of their owner and his neighbors, leaving a large portion of their wool adhering to bushes and thorns, and the remainder placed nearly beyond the possibility of carding, by the tory-weed and burdock, so common on new lands. To this general character of the native flocks, there was but one exception--a considerably numerous and probably accidental variety, known as the _Otter breed_, or _Creepers_. These were excessively duck-legged, with well-formed bodies, full chests, broad backs, yielding a close, heavy fleece, of medium quality of wool. They were deserved favorites where indifferent stone or wood fences existed, since their power of locomotion was absolutely limited to their enclosures, if protected by a fence not less than two feet high. The quality of their mutton equalled, while their aptitude to fatten was decidedly superior to, their longer-legged contemporaries. The race is now quite extinct. An excellent variety, called the Arlington sheep, was produced by General Washington, from a cross of a Persian ram upon the Bakewell, which bore wool fourteen inches in length, soft, silky, and admirably suited to combing. These, likewise, have long since become incorporated with the other flocks of the country.