354 HIGH FARMING, 1837-1874 



the reasons for their methods ; they farmed by experience and in- 

 tuition. Judgment is still all-important ; but practice has now been 

 reduced to principles and rules, which make the best methods 

 more nearly common property, or at least place them within reach 

 of all. The best arable farms in 1837 were cropped much as they 

 are now, except that rotations were more rigid and inelastic. Pedigree 

 barleys and pedigree wheats were already experimented upon by 

 Patrick Shirreff, Dr. Chevallier, and Colonel Le Couteur. By the 

 most enterprising of our predecessors all the kinds of farm produce 

 which are raised to-day were raised seventy years ago. 



Live-stock has doubtless immensely improved since the accession 

 of Queen Victoria. Specialisation did away with " general utility " 

 animals, and successfully developed symmetry, quality, early 

 maturity, or yield of milk among cattle. But the value and im- 

 portance of improving breeds had been thoroughly appreciated by 

 the best farmers before 1837. Though only one herd-book Coates's 

 Shorthorn Herdbook (1822) had begun to appear, the followers 

 of Bakewell, such as Charles and Robert Colling, Thomas Bates, 

 of Kirklevington, the Booths, and Sir Charles Knightley with the 

 Shorthorns, Benjamin Tomkins, John Hewer, and the Prices with 

 the Herefords, Francis Quartly, George Turner, William Davy, 

 and Thomas Coke of Norfolk with the North Devons, had already 

 brought to a high degree of perfection the breeds with which their 

 names are respectively associated. Flockmasters, like cattle- 

 breeders, had recognised the coming changes. Before 1837 BakewelTs 

 methods had been extensively imitated. The Lincolns, the Border 

 Leicesters of the Culleys, the Southdowns of Ellman of Glynde and 

 Jonas Webb of Babraham, the Black-faced Heath breed of David 

 Dun, the Cheviots of Robson of Belford were already firmly estab- 

 lished ; and some of the best of the local varieties of sheep, enum- 

 erated by Sir John Sinclair in his Address to the British Wool 

 Society (1791), were beginning to find their champions. Nor 

 were pigs unappreciated. The reproach was no longer justified 

 which, at the close of the eighteenth century, Arthur Young had 

 directed against farmers for their neglect of this source of profit. 

 Here, again, Bakewell had led the way. Efforts were being made to 

 improve such native breeds as the Yorkshire Whites, the Tamworths, 

 the reddish-brown Berkshires, or the black breeds of Essex and 

 Suffolk. 



Oxen were still extensively used for farm work. It is therefore 



