BREEDS, CROSSES, &C. 469 



set South Downs for his shepherd's stock. Whether the 

 breed should or should not, in tlie long run, establish itself, 

 I have the satisfa6^ion of feeling that I have done no ill 

 office to my-brother farmers by introducing it. From the 

 daily accounts I receive, I have good reason to believe 

 that it will be established." 



I may be pardoned, perhaps, if I here remark, that Mr. 

 Le Blanc, of Cavsnham, and Mr. Macro, of Bar- 

 row, being at Ipswich fair, and having felt, as well as 

 other farmers, the great advantage that promised to result 

 to the county from the introdu6lion of South Downs, pro- 

 posed a meeting of the farmers at the White Horse, to 

 present me with a piece of plate, for doing what they 

 thought a public good. A person came to me to tell me 

 what they were about, and I went immediately and re- 

 quested them to drop the design, which I etfedled with 

 difficulty ; at last they postponed it, as I urged that the re- 

 sult was too little known, and their experience too short 

 to form a satisfa6i:ory idea. A farmer afterwards told me 

 that he heard of the intention, and that had it been brought 

 forward he would have voted me an enemy to Suffolk, 

 for endeavouring to change the best breed in England for 

 a race of rats. 



Mr. Crow, of Lakenbam, informed me, in i8co, 

 that five and twenty years before, he had a few South 

 Downs at Ash Wicken, which he mixed with Norfolk 

 blood, and has since mixed with new J-,eicestcr, and he 

 thinks that between the three, he has a breed better than 

 cither of them, pure. 



H h 3 FOOD. 



