200 THE PORTRAIT GALLERY 



THE FOUNDER OF LIVESTOCK BREEDING 



78. Robert Bakewell was the pioneer artisan of modern live- 

 stock breeding. Born in Leicestershire about 1725, he found 

 early advantage over his contemporaries by a thorough educa- 

 tion in anatomy, at that time in its very rudiments as a science. 

 About 1750 he acceded to the management of his father's farm 

 and immediately put into application the knowledge of animal 

 form he had acquired in his earlier training. The livestock of 

 his period were most heterogeneous, a condition brought about 

 as a result of crossing Flemish stocks to both cattle and horses, 

 and Spanish wools to sheep. His early breeding is veiled in 

 darkest secrecy. He is reputed jealously to have excluded from 

 his breeding pens those who would study his methods and results, 

 and to have many times kept animals that would be barred from 

 breeding use on other estates. Be that as it may, it is most 

 likely probable that his apparent secrecy simply lay in his 

 inability to explain in his earlier successes the reasons for the 

 homogeneity which was attained by his inbreeding and the per- 

 fection of type which accrued from his recognition of the rela- 

 tion of external form to internal values. 



Robert Bakewell achieved success in each of the four prin- 

 cipal races of livestock; Leicester sheep, Longhorn cattle, the 

 Cart Horse (Shire), and the Small White pig. Due to the 

 greater rapidity of generation, his greatest success was found 

 in his sheep. In 1785 he had as many as eighty rams leased to 

 Sheep Breeders' Associations in his own and adjacent counties 

 and received as high as 300 guineas for the use of these rams 

 for a season. His most celebrated ram, Two Pounder, is reputed 

 to have earned 800 pounds in one year. His wide flung develop- 

 ment of the sire leasing system provided one of the chief forces 

 of advancement for the later British breeds. 



His successes in his Longhoms were scarcely so pronounced 

 although in an Oxfordshire sale in 1791, several bulls of his 



