THE I.OXG-HORXS. 77 



The preceding cut represents one of the best of the improved 

 long-horn bulls of the present day. From all we can gather of 

 their early history, they appear, before their improvement began, 

 to have been of rather sleazy appearance, loose jointed, sway- 

 backed, and coarse in the bone, — points yet not altogether bred 

 out of them, and perhaps never can be bred out by the use of their 

 own blood alone. Still, in the animal before us, we see a com- 

 pact, rangy beast, with many excellent quahties. 



We have not introduced the long-horned cattle into this work 

 because we recommend them, or expect them to be, to any extent, 

 brought into the United States as rivals to other popular breeds 

 which are already here to improve our native stock, although we 

 confess there are some salient and taking points of character in 

 them ; but chiefly to record the career of a man, distinguished in 

 his time as one of the greatest improvers of farm stock of which 

 we have any account — Robert Bakewell — and of whom our 

 American stock breeders should have some more distinct history 

 than what floats about among the fugitive papers of the time. 

 Our account of him is taken from Youatt, and his account from a 

 paper in the "Gentleman's Magazine," a London publication of 

 the last century. 



Robert Bakewell was a farmer and stock breeder by profes- 

 sion — as were his father, and grandfather before him — and born 

 at Dishley, in Leicestershire, England, about the year 1725. 

 His father and grandfather, during their lives, had both resided 

 on the same estate. In the course of his career, he bred the 

 common cart-horse of England to high perfection, giving him 

 greater size, weight, and more muscular form than he before 

 possessed, together with more beauty of form. He also bred the 

 coarse, long-wooled sheep into such marked improvement that 

 they assumed in his hands, the new names of "Dishley," "Bake- 

 well," or "Leicester," by the latter of which names (since fur- 

 ther improved, in other hands, by a cross of the "old Cotswolds" 



