28 
Bolert Bcikciveli. 
calves when they were well forward in their fourth year. As the 
Dishley Longhorn was not an early-maturing breed, an earlier 
age was considered too soon for the health and strength of both 
the calf and its dam. Bakewell would not have taken 120 
guineas, he said, for one of his teams of six “ cows ” — or 
heifers, if we must so call them until they become mothers. 
Bakewell tried many experiments with cattle, as with sheep, 
to ascertain the return for food consumed, testing his own with 
other breeds. With regard to these experiments, the results 
being in favour of his own, he certainly did not seek publicity, 
and Young doubtless followed Mr. Bakewell’s own sentiments 
in his reason for withholding the facts of which he had full 
knowledge. “ Accuracy in such experiments,” he said, “ is 
impossible, from differences in certain beasts in feeding, fatten- 
ing, &c. Besides, even supposing accuracy, other people would 
not give credit to such comparisons unless the breeders of each 
had selected specimens to represent their different breeds in the 
trial ; nor does Mr. Bakewell’s breed want such experiments to 
recommend them.” High condition was the rule of the breed- 
ing herd at Dishley ; but this, no doubt with much truth, was 
by Mr. Bakewell declared, and by Mr. Young believed, to be 
due to the superior breed of the animals, their hereditary fine- 
ness of bone, and correlated disposition to fatten rapidly. Young 
says : “ The general order in which Mr. Bakewell keeps his cattle 
is pleasing ; all are as fat as bears.” Again he remarks : “ If 
the degree of fatness in which he keeps all these cattle be con- 
sidered, and that he buys neither straw nor hay, it must appear 
that he keeps a larger stock on a given number of acres than 
most men in England.” Lawrence, in a less friendly tone, 
writing after Bakewell’s death, says : “ His animals were made to 
look well by high keep,” and significantly adds that Bakewell 
himself had “ shrewdly observed that ‘ the only way to have 
capital stock was to keep the price high.’ ” The prices, how- 
ever, with which Bakewell appears to have been satisfied were 
generally very moderate compared with some of those realised 
by breeders who obtained their stock from him and hired his 
bulls. This, however, if pursued, takes us out of the line of 
Bakewell’s immediate work. 
On one occasion Bakewell had let a bull for the season to a 
gentleman who died before the animal was due to return to 
Dishley. The executors sold it for 8 guineas to a butcher, who 
retailed its beef to his customers at 2\d. a pound. Bakewell 
thereupon brought an action and recovered 200 guineas as the 
value of the bull and 50 guineas for the season’s hire. 
If Bakewell made any secret of his practice in the improve- 
