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a food, and strongly objected to having it trodden into manure ; 

 his beasts were largely fed on it, in such small quantities that 

 they greedily ate what was before them and wasted little. 

 His activity was not confined to the breeding of cattle and 

 sheep, for he also produced a breed of black horses, thick and 

 short in the body, with very short legs and very powerful, two 

 ploughing 4 acres a day, a statement which seems much 

 exaggerated ; and was famous for his skill in irrigating 

 meadows, by which he could cut grass four times a year. He 

 was a firm believer in the wisdom of treating stock gently 

 and kindly, and his sheep were kept as clean as racehorses. 

 A visitor to Dishley saw a bull of huge proportions, with 

 enormous horns, led about by a boy of seven. He travelled 

 much, and admired the farms of Norfolk most in England, 

 and those of Holland and Flanders abroad, founding his own 

 system on these. It was his opinion that the Devon breed of 

 cattle were incapable of improvement by a cross of any other 

 breed, and that from the West Highland heifer the best breed 

 of cattle might be produced. 



He died in 1795, and apparently did not keep what he 

 made, owing largely to his boundless hospitality, which had 

 entertained Russian princes, German royal dukes, English 

 peers, and travellers from all countries. His breed of cattle 

 has completely disappeared, unless traces survive in the lately 

 resuscitated longhorn breed, but his principles are still acted 

 upon, viz. the correlation of form, and the practice of consan- 

 guineous breeding under certain conditions. 



Bakewell's earliest pupil was George CuUey, who devoted 

 himself to improving the breed of cattle, and became one of 

 the most famous agriculturists at the end of the eighteenth 

 and the commencement of the nineteenth centuries. Another 

 farmer to whom English agriculture owes much was John Ell- 

 man of Glynde, born in 1753, who by careful selection firmly 

 established the reputation of the Southdown sheep which had 

 previously been hardly recognized. He was one of the 



