20 THE BLACKMOOR VALE 



thoroughly and spread over a longer interval of time. 

 Experiments of such a nature also would drive home 

 to farmers at large the possibilities and value of proper 

 farm book-keeping, not the book-keeping of a merchant 

 or a banker who only wants to know his financial 

 position with regard to A, B, or C, but the book-keeping 

 of a manufacturer who must ascertain the cost of every 

 article he produces and the results obtained by each 

 department of his business. 



It is very questionable whether we need the present 

 multiplicity of sheep breeds in Great Britain, and yet 

 the tendency is to increase their number, for almost 

 every year some district decides -to fix and intensify 

 the local variation by constituting a flock book and 

 defining a new breed. Nothing is done to demonstrate 

 that the local race is better than its competitors and 

 therefore deserves perpetuation ; it is an article of 

 local patriotism that the sheep of the district must be 

 the best, and though the fact of its survival is an 

 argument in its favour, the odds are that one of the 

 dominant races would answer better when once the 

 acclimatization period was over. How otherwise can 

 we account for the success of the Oxford Downs in the 

 Border country, a priori one of the least likely homes 

 for them ? There can hardly be such wide differences 

 in the climate and soil of England as necessitate the 

 score or more of sheep breeds there to be found. The 

 formation of a local breed society does encourage men 

 to pay more attention to the class of animal they rear, 

 and so tunes up the management in the district, but 

 it also means the acceptance of a more parochial and 

 therefore lower standard ; it cuts men off from the 

 international market, and it encourages that somewhat 

 retail view of farming as a fine art which is still too 

 prevalent in British farming. 



