198 THE SHEEP. 



to assimilate nourishment readily, and arrive at early ma- 

 turity, are properties to be essentially regarded ; and that 

 these properties have a constant relation to a given form, 

 which can be communicated from the parents to the young, 

 and rendered permanent by a mixture of the blood of the 

 animals to which this form has been transmitted. Bake- 

 well, doubtless, carried his principles to the limits to which 

 they could be carried with safety and profit to the owner of 

 Sheep. Looking to symmetry and usefulness of form as the 

 essential characters to be cultivated, he was too apt to re- 

 gard the others, not merely as secondary, but as unimport- 

 ant. He is reported to have said that he did not care whe- 

 ther his Sheep produced wool at all ; and he endeavoured, 

 on all occasions, to shew the inutility of size as compared 

 with the fattening property. But a close and abundant 

 growth of wool, it is known, is connected with a healthy 

 state of the system, and with the power of the animals to 

 resist cold and atmospheric changes ; and a certain size is 

 found, by the experience of all breeders of Sheep, to be an 

 element in the profit to be derived from them. Every owner 

 of Sheep is taught by the result, that an animal of a size to 

 fatten to 40 Ibs. the quarter, is more profitable than one that 

 is capable of reaching only to 30 Ibs. in the same time. 

 Weight of body, therefore, and the nature and productive- 

 ness of the fleece, are not to be overlooked in the cultivation 

 of Sheep ; and although they may be regarded as secondary 

 properties, they cannot be held to be unimportant ones. " But 

 if Bakewell carried his principles of breeding to an extreme, 

 there is no reason why his successors should not now profit 

 by the knowledge acquired by observation and experience, 

 and cultivate a profitable size, and suitable fleece, as far as 

 these consist with the other properties sought for. Bake- 

 well was compelled, in a sense, to confine himself to his own 

 stock, and to the blood of one family, in order to preserve 

 that standard of form which he had produced. From the 

 subsequent multiplication of the New Leicester Breed, 



