"MRS. BELL'S LITTLE FLOCK" 



Figure 3. Mrs. Bell's little flock of multi-nippled twin-bearing sheep photographed in 

 August, 1922. This flock was made up of selected ewes having four or more functional 

 nipples, and whose first lambs were twins. Photograph by David Fairchild. 



IN^ 1914 I had made up my mind to 

 give up the sheep-breeding experi- 

 ments which I had been carrying 

 on since 1890, by handing the sheep 

 over to a younger man, INIr. J. G. 

 Davidson, of Stewiacke, N. S. Mr. 

 Davidson had had charge of the sheep 

 on Beinn Bhreagh for some years pre- 

 viously and was thoroughly familiar 

 with the experimental plans adopted. 

 I made an arrangement with him to 

 carry on the experiments in Stewiacke, 

 N. S., for at least a period of five 

 years as a commercial enterprise of his 

 own. 



By 1914 we had developed a six- 

 nippled breed of sheep, but considerable 

 difficulty had been experienced in get- 

 ting the flock to breed truly to the point 

 of selection adopted. This was shown 

 by the fact that the best nippled sheep 

 on the place were the offspring of sheep 

 that had been purchased from farmers 

 who had used our rams, and very few 

 of them were of our own breeding on 

 both father's and mother's side. 



In 1 91 4 the best nippled sheep were 



formed into a flock and removed to 

 Stewiacke, N. S., in charge of Mr. 

 Davidson, and we had an auction sale 

 of all of the other sheep on the place to 

 farmers who lived around here. After 

 having kept careful sheep breeding 

 records for twenty-four years, I felt 

 rather lost at first to find myself with- 

 out any sheep of my own breeding and 

 then discovered that Mrs. Bell also felt 

 very badly over the fact that I had 

 deprived myself of all my sheep breed- 

 ing material. In fact she felt so badly 

 over the matter that she made private 

 arrangements with Mr. John Mac- 

 Dermid to buy in a few of the sheep 

 for herself, in the hope that I would 

 take them up again. To my surprise 

 therefore, I found after all that we 

 were still in possession of a small flock 

 of sheep, consisting chiefly of sheep 

 that no one else wanted to buy ! Among 

 these sheep was a young ram No. 2308, 

 a black male six-nippled twin. Its fa- 

 ther was also a six-nippled twin, and 

 the mother, too, so that he was pre- 

 simied to have a hereditary tendency 



^ Copied without alteration from Mr. Bell's notes. 



