Improvements in Farming 59 



of fleece . . . give no place unto any.' The animals he thus 

 describes and praises would not win the admiration of stock farmers 

 to-day. Big bones do not mean that the cows would give much 

 milk, or that the bullocks would yield much meat of a good 

 quality. We must remember, however, that oxen were then 

 draught animals, and that it was only gradually that the yield of 

 meat and milk became the most important considerations. 



It was not until about 1760 that a methodical attempt was 

 made to produce a certain type of animal. Robert Bakewell of 

 Dishley in Leicestershire was the first to make notable progress 

 of this kind. He chose the Longhorn breed of cattle for his 

 experiments. He wanted to get smallness of bone, a large amount 

 of beef and a beast that would fatten easily. He was not successful 

 with the Longhorns, except in proving that a special kind of animal 

 could be bred by selection and in- breeding by mating bulls and 

 cows of the same family. The Longhorns have too long legs in 

 proportion to the weight and depth of their body, and they do 

 not give much milk. 



Before Bakewell's time, about 1700, Aislabie, whose ancestor 

 had got possession of Fountains Abbey and the herd of cattle 

 on it from the monks, had gone to Holland and bought some 

 Dutch bulls. Michael Dobinson of Durham and Sir William 

 St. Quentin also followed his example. The Fountains Abbey 

 cattle were white, the Dutch bulls were red, or red and white, 

 and the offspring of these bulls and the white cows were generally 

 roan. This was one source from which the Shorthorn breed 

 came, the breed that is still by far the most common in England. 

 For a long time farmers in the north and east of England had 

 been working actively on the improvement of their stock, but it 

 was only when Charles Colling of Ketton, near Darlington, began 

 to follow the rules of breeding which Bakewell had applied to 

 the Longhorns that rapid progress was made. He adopted 

 in-breeding in 1793, and produced at once bulls and cows whose 



