358 Rise and Progress of the Leicester Breed of Sheep. 
telling a brother shepherd, after a protracted survey, that " there 
must be a touch of the goat about them." 
At home Mr. Barford loved to be among his bees ; he said 
that there was no cross-breeding there, and that he had learned 
many a lesson from them in his craft. " Then if a wasp came, 
I suppose it would be a Cotswold or a Lincoln," was a reply 
which pleased him well. In the paddocks his sheep would 
follow him up and down, looking, as he would say, "as plump 
and as much alike as partridges ; " and his presentation picture 
represented him with a book in his hand, as if he were reading 
or preaching to them " upon the claims of long descent." 
Cake and corn he passed by with contem})t, and maintained that 
pure Bakewells should be " fed on vegetable food only, and be 
open for inspection at all times of the year." He could boast to 
the last of his full share of doublets, and his shepherd, who was 
as old as himself, could say to any visitor, " Maister, touch 'em 
across the hips — no trouble in lambing, I never helps them." 
The folding doors in the hall at Foscote were always taken 
down on his great day, and the same homily on careful in- 
and-in breeding was delivered each year from the head of his 
table after luncheon. Passing through his black-breasted reds, 
which were all bred on the same principle, you reached the show 
sheds. The rams, which he generally let at from 11. to 14/., were 
tied up by the head like ponies in the first of them. They were 
not inspected there, but the company seated themselves on 
benches in the next shed before luncheon, and each sheep was 
led out. The visitors might get up and handle them, and then 
enter the other shed for the same purpose when the lots had all 
been on parade, — but "handling one was handling all." 
It was a great matter with him to have no top-knot, and yet 
to keep a hard, well-woolled head, which could always defy the 
fly. The top-knot never made its appearance by any chance at 
Foscote, and when one of the rams was put to a score of Cots- 
wold ewes in Oxfordshire, there was no trace of it among the 
lambs. In order to pursue the experiment, six ewes of this cross 
were selected and put to a Cotswold ram with an especially 
grand top-knot, but the lambs of that generation lacked it, and 
it only returned after a third Cotswold cross. None of the lambs 
with the Barford blood in them were attacked with diarrhoea, and 
they all came as large as Cotswolds. The recital of such facts is 
but due to the old man's memory. We give them on the authority 
of the Cotswold breeder who made the experiment. No testimony 
could be more impartial, and no proof more sure, that even if size 
has been sacrificed to an honest belief in a monopoly of the 
Leicester tap-root, no blood can stand the test of time, and hold its 
own in a cross, unless it has been kept " as pure as Eclipse." 
