M.— AGRICULTURE 237 



Meat Production. 



Early agricultural writers make little reference to mutton. Tusser 

 advises the purchase of old crones at the end of August for autumn 

 fattening, and included ' fat crones and such old things ' in the farmer's 

 daily diet between Michaelmas and Hallowmas. Tusser, Lisle and 

 other early writers refer to fat lambs and ' House Lambs,' but the usual 

 practice was to kill for meat only those sheep which were too old and 

 infirm for further keeping. Losses from disease were very heavy, and 

 the lambing percentage was low, so that the need for maintaining the 

 numbers of the flock for wool production would make it impossible to 

 slaughter young sheep in any great numbers. 



In the eighteenth century great changes took place. The demand for 

 wool was greater than ever, but the developments which took place in 

 agriculture made it possible to maintain larger numbers of sheep and to 

 fatten them in either winter or summer. Among these changes were 

 the enclosures, increased attention to drainage, and, above all, the cultiva- 

 tion of roots and clover. The growth of the towns and the demands of 

 a large industrial population provided the necessary outlet and stimulus 

 for the production of mutton on a large scale. The application of Bake- 

 well's genius to the development of a sheep capable of maturing early, 

 feeding quickly and producing a heavy fat carcase, completed the 

 sequence of changes which, for the first time, made meat production 

 the object of prime importance in the British sheep industry. 



Following on the changes I have mentioned, and stimulated by the 

 constantly growing markets for both mutton and wool, there were other 

 important developments in the latter half of the eighteenth and the early 

 part of the nineteenth centuries. 



Mountain Sheep Farming. 



The first of these is the development of Mountain sheep farming, which, 

 in its present form, dates very largely from the second half of the eighteenth 

 century. It is fairly safe to estimate that in Great Britain Mountain sheep 

 now outnumber all other breeds put together, and their importance is 

 such that we are apt to assume that sheep have always been the chief stock 

 kept on mountain land. This certainly was not the case. In the Scottish 

 Highlands and in the mountain areas of Wales sheep were, until com- 

 paratively recently, of very much less importance than cattle. The 

 estimated numbers of different classes of stock in Scotland even at the end 

 of the eighteenth century were : 



Horses. Cattle. Sheep. 



243,000 1,047,000 2,852,000 

 as compared with 156,316 1,235,999 7.649,551 in 1930 



The figures for Perth, Inverness and Argyll were : 



Horses. Cattle. Sheep. 



36,544 185,937 550.450 



as compared with 21,640 166,738 1,874,177 in 1930 



