.50 OS BREEDING- AND REARING ANIMALS. 



the prevailing fashion of some, now tacking 

 about, to produce large fat males ; and to what 

 purpose, but to make a better hand of their corn 

 than to take it to market : and knowledge, tak- 

 ing the advantage of ignorance, dupes the cre- 

 dulous out of their money. 



Can the great quantity of fat laid upon an 

 animal, at such expense, produce a better sta- 

 mina in the offspring, or were ever the best 

 animals produced from the largest males ? If 

 they were, Bakewell was wrong altogether. Can 

 it be right to call an animal i'lom such an in- 

 dulgence and put him upon poor land to work, 

 whereby he is brought into a rapid dechne, 

 when propagating his species ; and may not a 

 sudden transition of a male from a fat to a lean 

 state be injurious to the constitution, and is it 

 strange that they produce a decMning stock ? 



Various are the conjectures how or where 

 Bakewell procured his sheep ? He had them 

 from Lincolnshire, not from the rich marshes. 

 He there bought a score of ewes of a person 

 who could not be prevailed upon to sell a fa- 

 vorite tup, and agreed to give a guinea an ewe 

 to have them tupped by him before they came 

 home ; a great business-man, in Leicestershire, 

 saw them en the road coming home, and heard 

 something about the cost of tupping, and who 



