ATTENTION TO CROSSING. 



13 



clime and season, and the instinctive habits that have 

 been long- nurtured by these, without both it uiid its 

 progeny suffering from the change : — Nature cannot 

 thus be made to bend to human intention ; it will give 

 way in the attempt. 



In crossing there are several important things to be 

 attended to. Well formed parents ought to be selected, 

 and, if enlargement of the carcass be wanted, the issue 

 should be better fed than its originators, which ought 

 to be of a size rather under, than above what the pas- 

 ture is capable of supporting. The size of the parents 

 should not be much disproportioned at first, as nature 

 abhors sudden extremes, and does every thing in the 

 most gradual manner. It is better, when some in- 

 crease has been attained, to bring the breed to the re- 

 quired size by one or two crossings.* In choosing a 

 breed, we should adopt that which affords the greatest 

 quantity of market produce, in return for the food con- 

 sumed ;f and a particular breed ought always to be 

 preferred to the sheep of a district. We must not 



* Dr Cline, in a communicaticm to the Board ot Agriculture, observes 

 on this point : *' Experience has proved, that crossing has only succeeded 

 in an eminent degree, in those instances in which the females were 

 larger, than in the usual profJortion of females to males, and that it has 

 gensrally failed when the males were proportionally large." 



t It was owing to a peculiar view taken of this maxim, that so 

 enormous sums were asked and given, for the hire of rams, at the time 

 Mr Bakewell brought the new Leicester to perfection. That gentle- 

 man would never have obtained 1200 guineas for the hire of three rams 

 if the speculators had not intended to procure nearly similar prices for 

 the use of the offspring of these animals; and it may be pretty sately 

 affirmed, that this traffic was ultimately the cause of much mischief to 

 the breed in question, by inducing many to speculate on what was likely 

 to prove a fashionable article, without carng much Abr the endurancf 

 of the really valuable {xjints. 



