Report on the Exhibition of Live- Stock at Derhy. 581 
though it was said they were not so fat as usual at Derby ; but 
the sheep were, as a rule, beyond description fat,* " larding the 
lean earth," and trimmed, and combed, and coloured, and made 
unnatural, bj the " foreign aid of art," not the art which is to 
conceal art, but that which is intended to conceal blemishes. 
In all the classes for ewes, except that for the; Shropshire breed, 
the entries were remarkably small, and out of proportion to the 
Tams, due, as it is held, to the unwillingness of breeders to 
sacrifice a number of their best ewes by making them too fat to 
breed. 
LiNCOLNS. 
Lincolns mustered thirty-two pens out of thirty-nine entries, 
or about the same number as at Carlisle, while at Kilburn there 
were fifty-six entries, and forty-five present. These were quite 
up to the average standard in point of merit, and seeing that 
this breed of sheep extends throughout Lincolnshire, and is 
extensively bred in Rutland, Derbyshire, Cambridgeshire, and 
other counties, it is somewhat astonishing that there was not 
a better entry. Mr. R. Smith, in his Report upon the Live 
Stock at Chester in this ' Journal, 'f stated that " 60,000 lamb- 
hoggs " are frequently seen at Lincoln Fair ; and Mr. John 
Algernon Clarke, writing in 1878, said that there often are 
" from 40,000 to 50,000 hoggs at Lincoln April Fair, where the 
best pens realise from four to five guineas per head at fourteen 
months old." | So that there must be many flocks of Lincolns 
not very far from Derby. The Lincolns are grand sheep, with 
their large frames, yet without coarseness, and their wool of 
extremely long staple and extraordinary quantity, yet withal 
fine and lustrous. These refinements are due to the influence 
of the Leicesters, levelled up by Bakewell, who began to 
improve them about the middle of the last century. The 
" Dishley " Leicesters were publicly adopted to improve the 
Lincolns in 1776, and soon worked a marvellous change. In 
* It appears from a very old doggrel handed down tlirough several genera- 
tions that fat and otherwise extraordinary sheep had heen seen of old in Derby. 
'J'his has eight stanzas, of which the first two may be given : — 
" As I was going to Derby, 
Upon a market day, 
T met the finest ram, sir. 
That ever was fed on hay. 
" This ram was fat behind, sir. 
This ram was fat before, 
This ram was 1 0 feet high, sir, 
Indeed it was no more." 
+ ' On the Exhibition of Live Stock at Chester.' By Eobert Smith. Jour. 
Eoy. Agi'i. Sop., vol. xix. p. 383. 
X ' Practical Agriculture.' By John Algernon Clarke. Forming part of the 
'ISIemoir on the Agriculture of England and Wales.' Jour. Itoy. Agri. Sec., vol. 
xiv. S.8. p. 586. 
