The Farm Livestock of the Period. 275 



southern counties, and was to be found in almost every district 

 of England, it was of course in the neighbourhood of Dishley 

 that it was most highly in fashion. Bakewell himself was 

 not disposed to yield the palm to any other breed, foreign or 

 native, and kept on his farm sheep of the Ryland and Spanish 

 breeds, merely to afford ocular proof of the superior excellence 

 of his New Leicesters, People came from far and wide to 

 purchase strains of the Dishley blood. A Mr. Paget sold at 

 his auction on November 16th, 1793, 200 ewes of this variety 

 for over £2,500; and at the same sale a breeder is said to 

 have refused a thousand guineas for a pen of six. In fact, 

 so eager were flock-masters to get hold of the Dishley strain 

 that they had been known to buy from the butchers the draft 

 ewes sold fat by Bakewell. Thereupon, putting into practice 

 a theory of his own, — viz., that any herbage saturated by 

 flowing inundations could propagate the rot, — he used to turn 

 those sheep destined for the Christmas fat market on to his 

 irrigated meadows during the preceding autumn, in order that 

 their livers, diseased with the fluke, might prevent their being 

 utilised for breeding purposes.^ 



Though the meat and fleece off a Lincoln sheep was as a 

 rule heavier, breeders of the Dishley variety maintained that 

 their animals yielded a greater quantity of both wool and 

 mutton to the acre. 



We have been at some pains to search the records in order 

 to find out the statistics of sheep carcases at this period. The 

 heaviest sheep of the century was a three-shear New Leicester 

 bred by Jobling, of Styford, in 1794, whose Kve weight was 

 330 lbs. and carcase 232^ lbs. ^ The next heaviest animal was 

 the outcome of a bet, by which Logan, a Berwick farmer, and 

 Sheriff, an East Lothian sheep breeder, each undertook to pro- 

 duce a heavier sheep than the other by the first Friday in the 

 November of 1791.^ The latter's animal scaled 2941bs. 4ozs., 

 its hind-quarters when butchered reaching 106 lbs. and its fore- 

 quarters 87 lbs. But a New Leicester killed in 1797, from a 



^ Farmer^s Tour through the East of England, vol. i. p. 110, etc. 



2 Annals of Agriculture, vol. xxii. p. 337. 



3 Id. Ibid., vol. xvii. p. 500. 



