THE LARGE YORKSHIRE 



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I largest and best young sows to Small Yorkshire boars of great 

 fattening capacity. The improvement thus effected mainly took 

 place sixty or so years ago about the cities of Leeds, Keighley, 

 and Skipton in the county of York, and to a considerable extent 

 by factory hands and laborers. In 1851 Joseph Tuley, a weaver 

 of Keighley, exhibited a pig at the Royal. Agricultural Show at 

 Windsor that attracted great attention, and later his strain of 

 Large Yorkshires was very popular, and his pigs sold at high 



Fig. 359. Holywell Royalty II, a fine example of a Large Yorkshire boar. Bred 

 and owned by Sanders Spencer, St. Ives, England. From photograph, by courtesy 



of Mr. Spencer 



prices. At this time the pig breeders of Yorkshire and Cumber- 

 land kept pedigrees of their pigs, which they printed. The agri- 

 cultural societies of the region offered prizes to promote the breed, 

 and there was keen competition in the shov/ ring. The various 

 towns had agricultural societies and shows. Regarding these 

 Sidney wrote as follows : 



At these shows there is often a row of twenty or thirty fat pigs, worth 

 from /6 to ^i 2 each, all as white as soap and water can make them, stretched 

 on beds of clean straw, with wrappers of some kind to protect them from the 

 sun or rain, contending for the first prize, ^4 ; second prize, ^3 ; third prize, 

 £1 ; fourth prize, £1. 



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