Tom Brooks. 459 



at once the produce of the strong chalk and the marsh 

 land. It flourishes on the east side of the county, 

 beginning from the Barton marshes on the Humber 

 side, and so by Caistor and Louth to Spilsby. It also 

 follows the rich land from Lincoln to Peterborough, 

 by Market Deeping, and over the marsh-land tract of 

 Spalding, Holbeach, and Long Sutton, to the very 

 borders of Norfolk. 



Lincolnshire lost a fine old sportsman in Mr. 

 Thomas Brooks, or " Tom Brooks" of Croxby, as he 

 was familiarly called. For many years past Tom had 

 officiated as judge at the Royal and other great 

 shows. He liked being among the hunter or the 

 blood-horse classes ; and his stalwart figure, with his 

 rather high broad shoulders, thinnish legs, and some- 

 what small, weather-beaten head, made him a man of 

 mark in the centre of the ring. He knew his work 

 thoroughly, and would not brook " veterinary dicta- 

 tion ;" and his rejoinder when one of them raised his 



late Mr. Greetham sold 220 hoggs off his Riseholme Farm at the Lin- 

 coln April Fair at 5/. each. 



We read in the Farmers' Magazine: "In 1826, Mr. Dawson, ol 

 Withcall, killed a three-shear sheep, weighing 96^ lbs. per quarter ; a 

 two-shear weighing 911DS. per quarter; and a shearling, 7ilbs. per 

 quarter. Mr. Robert Smith in his report of Lincoln sheep at the War- 

 wick Show, states that ' he has known 14-months-old lamb-hoggs slaugh- 

 tered at Lincoln April Fair, thirty together averaging 35lbs. per quarter, 

 and one hundred together clipping 14-lbs. of washed wool each.' It is 

 not the common practice for breeders of Lincolns to have them fit for 

 the butcher at 14 or 15 months old ; but they are generally kept until 

 they are 22 to 28 months old, when their weight will be from 30 to 4olbs. 

 per quarter, and they cut a. second fleece weighing from 10 to I4lbs. 

 The weight of wool of an entire flock, under fair average management, 

 is about 8 Albs, each ; in some cases, especially on good layer, this 

 weight no doubt is exceeded. Mr. John Clarke's Lincoln prize ram 

 clipped 5 1 fibs, of wool in three years, an average of I7|lbs. each year; 

 while a neighbour of his, in 1859, clipped 327 hogget fleeces, which 

 weighed altogether 130 tods, an average of over nibs, per fleece. The 

 Lincoln breeders consider the mutton of admirable quality, having less 

 fat, and a greater portion of fine-grained lean flesh, than the Leicester. 

 The ewes are good breeders, but like the Cotswolds and Leicesters they 

 are not good sucklers." 



