,50 ON 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 from such an in- 

 dulgence and put him upon poor land to work, 

 whereby he is brought into a rapid decline, 

 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 declining 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 on the road coming home, and heard 

 something about the cost of tupping, and who 



