i8 SHEEP: BREEDS AND MANAGEMENT. 



to assume from any of the characters presented by the wool 

 of the new Leicester breed that the parent stock was any 

 other than the Long-woolled sheep of the Midland Counties." 



It was thus the ordinary sheep of his district that Bakewell 

 used in bringing out his New Leicesters or Dishley breed 

 apparently without having recourse to crossing, but by a 

 confident reliance upon selection only. Bakewell's success 

 was due to a firm faith in the power of animals to transmit 

 their good qualities to their progeny, and a steadfast ad- 

 herence to the type which he wished to produce. With him 

 beauty of form, utility "of form, early maturity, and good 

 fattening properties were the main points to be secured, and 

 he was apparently careless as to wool. He was a positive, 

 secretive, and self-reliant man, and left very little record of 

 his proceedings. 



That Bakewell deserves to be considered a genius there 

 can be no doubt, and few inventors have merited higher 

 praise than he, or have added more to the greatness and 

 prosperity of their country. The man who led the way to 

 the improvement of all our breeds of live stock, and showed 

 how in a few years the animal form might be modified, and 

 improved incalculably beyond anything which had previously 

 existed, surely deserves a national monument, and yet how 

 little recognition has he received ! The name of Bakewell is 

 rarely mentioned among those worthies who have made Eng- 

 land. It is not seen inscribed on the cornices of public halls, 

 and his bust is missing in the corridors of the national pan- 

 theon. Novelists, dramatists and painters, soldiers, engineers, 

 and scientists may have their names recorded on the walls of 

 fame, but Bakewell, the apostle of the art of improving the 

 domestic animals of the world, is passed by unnoticed, and 

 doomed to lie forgotten in his grave without a mark by which 

 those who participate, as all do, in his grand work may 

 know to whom they owe so much. It is not out of place to 

 call attention to this omission, and we cannot but think that 

 the suggestion should receive attention, seeing that agriculture 



