SCIENCE AND ART OF BREEDING. 109 



to be taken for thought and comparison before a selection is 

 made. It may be, however, that one single point is in view. 

 This simplifies the matter. Mr. Bakewell spent months in 

 selecting a ram with the kind of head he once wanted. And 

 although there were undesirable points in other respects 

 about the ram, yet he got the head, and then went to work 

 to breed out these by other selections. This takes time, but 

 the fixing of a type is a work of time. The history of the 

 breeding of our modern sheep is full of examples of this long 

 life work, and the best of the old breeders were never able 

 to preserve strict uniformity in any breed. Two flocks of the 

 New Leicester were started at the same time by two breed- 

 ers, and the flocks were kept quite distinct for fifty years. 

 At the end of this period the two flocks were entirely differ- 

 ent in type, and each had wholly lost the special characteris- 

 tics of the original flock. Here is an instance of the effect 

 of personality in the breeding. The type desired according 

 to the fancy of the breeder had prevailed in each flock; 

 and each had departed greatly from the type of the original 

 flock from which the two sprang. Variation must have a 

 distinct cause. Such a cause exists in the breeding of small 

 flocks in each of which there has been special methods of 

 selection of rams for breeding. It is impossible to maintain 

 an invariable condition or habit of form, among many flocks, 

 for the personality of the owner must inevitably appear in 

 each one. Thus it is that breeders of any special class of sheep 

 should frequently examine what their competitors are do- 

 ing, so as to avoid any serious loss of uniformity of type in 

 the breed. In this our herd books, and the annual exhibi- 

 tions are extremely useful, and it is doubtless by means of 

 these annual opportunities of exhibiting the skilled work of 

 the breeders, all working towards a single standard of ex- 

 cellence, that we shall be freed in a great measure from the 

 risks and failures of the old breeders, who made their work 

 a secret and each one of whom was working in ignorance 

 of what others were doing 1 . 



There cannot be a serious divergence of results when 

 every skilled breeder is working with a portrait, as it were, 

 of his desired sheep before his eyes, as is the case with 

 the standard before him and the actual sheep exhibited at 

 the fairs. This modern improvement is the greatest security 



