CHAPTER VIII. 



THE STOCK-BREEDER'S ART AND ROBERT BAKEWELL 



(1725-95). 



Necessity for improving the live-stock of the country ; sheep valued for 

 their wool, cattle for power of draught or yield of milk ; beef and mutton 

 the growing need : Robert Bakewell the agricultural opportunist ; his 

 experiments with the Black Horse, the Leicester Longhorns, and the New 

 Leicesters ; rapid progress of stock-breeding : sacrifice of wool to mutton. 



WITHOUT the aid of turnips the mere support of live-stock had 

 been in winter and spring a difficult problem ; to fatten sheep and 

 cattle for the market was in many districts a practical impossibility. 

 The introduction, therefore, of the field cultivation of roots, clover, 

 and artificial grasses proved the pivot of agricultural progress. It 

 enabled farmers to carry more numerous, bigger, and heavier stock ; 

 more stock gave more manure ; more manure raised larger crops ; 

 larger crops supported still larger flocks and herds. Thus to the 

 hopeful enthusiasts of the close of the eighteenth century the agri- 

 cultural circle seemed capable of almost indefinite and always pro- 

 fitable expansion. 



But recent improvements in arable farming could not yield their 

 full profits till the live-stock of the country was also improved. 

 The necessary revolution in the breeding and rearing of stock was 

 mainly the work of Robert Bakewell (1725-95), a Leicestershire 

 farmer, living at Dishley, near Loughborough. Its results were 

 even more remarkable than those which followed from the new 

 methods of Tull and Townshend. Bake well's improvements were 

 also more immediately accepted by agriculturists. The slow 

 adoption of improved practices in tillage was mainly due to caution ; 

 in some degree, also, it was due to the fact that the innovators 

 were, if not amateurs, gentlemen-farmers. 1 On the other hand, 



1 In 1750 or 1757 Mr. Pringle, a retired army surgeon, introduced the 

 drilling of turnips on his estate near Coldstream in Berwickshire. His crops 



