CHAP. i. THE DAWN OF IMPROVEMENT. 17 



purposes, be taken as that when scientific stock-breeding commenced 

 in Great Britain on well-defined lines, and when scope was given for 

 the victories of Peace which are not less renowned than those of War. 

 In our opinion there are few of these achievements that are more 

 remarkable than the subjection of the brute creation to the uses of 

 man, and the immense increase of the national wealth which has 

 resulted from the systematic rearing of live-stock for the purposes of 

 food supply. 



Apart from the improvement in the varieties of sheep with a view to 

 the production of fine wool, which was largely the result of legislative 

 enactments, directed to the furtherance of a special commercial object 

 in the development of the nation, we find the first traces of a taste for 

 live-stock in records of the value placed upon oxen for the plough. 

 There are, for example, deeds in existence dating as far back as 1720 

 in which teams of oxen' are specifically bequeathed by name. Here, 

 however, we have to deal with the breeding of cattle as contributors to 

 the food supply and not as animals of draught, and with the rearing of 

 sheep for the production of mutton rather than for their wool-bearing 

 properties. As usually happens when the time was ripe for a change, the 

 man appeared, and what proved to be nothing less than a revolution in 

 stock-breeding received its chief stimulus from, if it was not actually 

 initiated by, the exertions of one great breeder. Robert Bakewell, 

 of Dishley, in Leicestershire, was born in 1725, and began to breed 

 horses, cattle, sheep and pigs about 1755. 



In his " Observations on Live Stock," published in 1794, George 

 Culley tells us that " the kind of cattle most esteemed before 

 Mr. Bakewell's day were the large, long-bodied, big-boned, coarse, 

 flat-sided kind, and often lyery or black fleshed. On the contrary, 

 this discerning breeder introduced a middle-sized, clean, small- 

 boned, round-carcassed, kindly-looking cattle, and inclined to be 

 fat." Bakewell's sheep also, according to the same authority, " sur- 

 passed all other breeds in their propensity to get fat, and in paying the 

 most money for the quantity of food consumed." Arthur Young was 

 among Bakewell's numerous visitors, and he states that the principle 

 that guided him was " to gain the beast, whether sheep or cow, that 

 would weigh most on the most valuable joints, and, at the same time 

 that he gained the shape that was of the greatest value in the smallest 

 compass, he produced a breed hardier and easier fed than any other. 

 The smaller the bones the truer would be the make of the beast, the 

 quicker would it fat, and its weight would have a larger proportion of 

 valuable meat, flesh not bone being the butchers object." It was in 

 1767 that Arthur Young made these observations. In 1785 Young paid 

 a second visit to Dishley, and then said that " the leading ideal which 

 governed all Bakewell's exertions was to procure a breed which on a 

 given food would give the most profitable meat ; that in which the 

 proportion of useful meat to the quantity of offal was the greatest, also 

 in which the proportion of the best to the inferior joints was like- 

 wise the greatest." These then were the objects at which Bakewell 

 aimed. 



