LARGE YORKSHIRE OR LARGE WHITE 



537 



of bone compared with the others. This cross was improved by 

 breeding the largest and best young sows to Small Yorkshire 

 boars of great fattening capacity. The improvement thus effected 

 mainly took place sixty or so years ago about the cities of Leeds, 

 Keighley, and Skipton in the county of York, and to a con- 

 siderable extent by factory hands and laborers. In 185 1 Joseph 

 Tuley, a weaver of Keighley, exhibited a pig at the Royal Agri- 

 cultural Show at Windsor that attracted great attention, and 



Fig. 246. Holywell Royalty II, a fine example of a Large Yorkshire boar. 

 Bred and owned by Sanders Spencer, Holywell Manor, St. Ives, Eng- 

 land. Photograph from Mr. Spencer 



later his strain of Large Yorkshires was very popular, and his 

 pigs sold at high prices. At this time the pig breeders of York- 

 shire and Cumberland kept pedigrees of their pigs, which they 

 printed and made much of. The agricultural societies of the 

 region offered prizes to promote the breed, and there was keen 

 competition in the show ring. The various towns had agricultural 

 societies and shows. Regarding these Sidney wrote as follows : 



At these shows there is often a row of twenty or thirty fat pigs, worth 

 from £6 to ^12 each, all as white as soap and water can make them, 

 stretched on beds of clean straw, with wrappers of some kind to protect 

 them from the sun or rain, contending for the first prize, £4. ; second prize, 

 ^3 ; third prize, £2 ; fourth prize, £1. 



