680 Jteport on the Sheep 'Exhibited at Windsor. 
the limits of little more than a century lies all the history of 
British sheep which practically concerns us nowadays. The 
breeds of to-day have as little iu common with the sheep of two 
or three hundred years ago as the nineteenth-century English- 
man has with his Saxon or Norman progenitors. It was towards 
the latter part of the last century that one or two thoughtful 
men grasped the simple, but then novel, truth that a sheep 
does not, or need not, live for wool alone. Robert Bakewell of 
Dishley was the first and the most prominent of these reformers. 
He went, possibly, to extremes, and sacrificed, as is alleged, the 
fleece too recklessly in his new-born zeal for the improvement 
of the carcass, but he unquestionably did a great work and laid 
the foundation of British sheep as we know them now. After 
him arose another giant of those days — John EUman of Glynde 
— who did for the Short-wools what Bakewell did for the 
Long-wools. These two men represent the two movements 
whence came the improvement of the national flocks. There 
was another movement — which seemed for a time to have more 
impetus than either — having for its aim the introduction of the 
merino. Happily (for it would no doubt have checked the im- 
provement of mutton without giving a compensating value to 
wool) this failed, notwithstanding the efforts of an influential 
society formed for the express purpose of supporting it. 
At the time when the Koyal Agricultural Society was 
started, the two broad streams of amelioration which flowed from 
Dishley and Glynde respectively had overswept the country. 
There was scarcely a district which the improved Leicester had 
not invaded, scarcely a breed on which it had not left some 
impress. The improved Southdown, if less ubiquitous, had 
exerted an influence not less potent, and had helped to lay 
the foundation of breeds which long ere this have rivalled it in 
importance and fame. A spirit of alertness and enterprise was 
abroad. The then recent discovery of Liebig that the natural 
heat of the body is maintained by food, that cold is accordingly 
wasteful to the stock-keeper, and that consequently sheep will 
thrive better and fatten quicker with warmth and shelter, had 
just been practically grasped by flock-mastei's. Lord Spencer, 
in the earliest pages of the Journal, urged the necessity of 
keeping " accurate pedigrees " of cattle and sheep, while Mr. 
Pusey announced that the new Leicester, or a Leicester and 
Cotswold cross, effected a saving in the cost of production (by 
reason of its early maturity) amounting to 20 per cent. In the 
Farmer s Magazine, a Hampshire sheep-breeder, Mr. Twynam, 
was challenging, through Lord Spencer, the flockmasters of the 
country to a trial of twenty-five wether lambs to be wintered on 
