64 Improvements in Farming 



insistence. He and the people who agreed with him based their 

 arguments on the fact that bullocks were less expensive to keep 

 than horses, and that their carcases could be sold for food when 

 their working days were over, no matter how old and tough 

 they might be. The common sense and practice of the farmers 

 went against Young. They did not mind if a horse cost twice as 

 much to keep as a bullock, so long as his work on the farm and on 

 the road was worth three times as much. Between 1760 and 

 1820, when expeditious and thorough cultivation became more 

 urgent and the need for carting produce long distances on hard 

 roads arose, horses rapidly displaced bullocks. 



From this came a stimulus towards improving the breed of 

 farm horses. Bakewell took up this work, and improved the 

 Leicestershire breed of the old English horse. Marshall, writing 

 in 1790, says that ' during the last thirty years the long fore-end, 

 long back, and long, thick, hairy legs have been contracting into 

 a short thick carcase, a short but upright fore-end and short clean 

 legs, it having been at length discovered by men of superior 

 penetration that strength and activity, rather than height and 

 weight, are the more essential properties of farm horses, and there 

 appears to be at present some hope of men in general gaining 

 their senses so far as to see them in the same light '. The 

 increased demand sent up the value of horses. In Scotland the 

 prices of the best Clydesdale horses in 1784 were from .18 to 20. 

 In 1795 Robertson, who surveyed the agriculture of Mid-Lothian, 

 said the prices had risen to 30 and 35. The Scotsmen had tried 

 some horses of Bakewell's breeding, but considered them too slow. 



Unsystematic draining was performed in England for a long 

 time before trouble was taken to find the most efficient methods. 

 Water, which damages crops, comes from two sources. Spring 

 water is thrown out on the surface where the soil strata lie in 

 certain ways, and this water often spreads and injures many 

 acres of grass or crops before it disappears. Surface water from 



