176 



OUR DOMESTIC ANIMALS 



This race is also very fruitful, the ewes giving a sure and invaluable means, provided it is done 

 birth to two and sometimes three lambs annually, with perfectly healthy animals possessing great 

 In this, however, it yielded to Bakewell's new \-itality. This was the case with the solid and 

 breed, which it had materially assisted to form, bony sheep that Bakewell made use of. Prop- 

 agation between members of 

 the same family, if pushed too 

 far, has its evil side in too great 

 refining, leading to deteriora- 

 tion, — a rock on which the 

 new Leicester breed has split, 

 more or less, for its reputa- 

 tion is not as widely extended 

 now as it was a century ago. 

 Bakewell's breed, produced 

 as we have stated, was all 

 pure white in body, head, and 

 legs, and was without horns. 

 Its head was long and slim, 

 the neck short, enlarging 

 conically toward the base, 

 chest broad, shoulders and 

 sides plump, back flat, loins 

 broad, and the bones very 

 small and delicate. Fattening 

 these sheep gave them an al- 

 The old Lincolnshire race was very coarse, most conical shape, the base of the cone being 

 very bony, very sluggish, and was not fit to at the breast and the truncated point at the 

 kill until it was three years old, by which time hind parts. The skin was very delicate, the tail 

 its meat was tough and not succulent, — little small, and the wool moderately long, but always 

 to the taste of the English gourmet. 



Bakewell's new Leicester breed, which 

 is the product of very careful selection and 

 mating, has by degrees superseded the fore- 

 going. He and other well-known British 

 breeders have not hesitated to propagate 

 among animals of the same family when 

 they thought it wise to do so. They started 

 with the true idea that in the hands of skill- 

 ful breeders, animals are as malleable as 

 dough. They believed that by laying down 

 fixed rules to a fixed end, and by regulating 

 food and regimen efficaciously, they could 

 transform breeds, especially those of sheep, 

 as they pleased. 



To obtain rapidly a relatively large num- 

 ber of animals having the same qualities (to 



serveasthebasisof greater numbers still), prop- inferior in quality to that of the old Hereford- 

 agation between members of the same family is shire breed. But for butcher's meat this new 



ReAHV in .SlAUT FOU Till; P.XRIS Ex IIIUITK iN 



The tuft on shoulder shows length of wool 



Plioti) J. T. NewnKin. Berklianipstead 



A Leicester R,\m 



Photo J. T. Newman, Berkliampstead 



