601 
DR. HITCHMAN ON THE BREEDING OF STOCK. 
J. IIitchman, Esq., M.D., chairman of the committee of 
the Derbyshire Agricultural Society, recently read an elabo¬ 
rate paper upon the “ Breeding and Form of Stock ” to the 
members of the society in the Lecture Hall. The lecture 
was admirably illustrated by a collection of drawings, to 
which frequent reference was made. 
Dr, Hitchman commenced by noticing the increasing demand 
for meat on the one hand, and our diminishing resources on 
the other, and gave a few interesting statistics, showing the 
enormous demand for London alone. A gentleman wrote 
some time ago a brilliant article in the Quarterly Review , 
entitled “The London Commissariat.” He made a careful 
calculation, that, supposing all the oxen required for a year 
to be coming along the Great North Road, and the sheep on 
the Western Road at the same time—and he himself on a 
pillar at Hyde Park—at ten abreast, the last animal of the 
herd of cattle would be seventy-two miles away, and the 
driver goading his shrinking flank considerably beyond 
Peterborough. And of the sheep, at ten abreast, on the 
Western Road, he says, “ the shepherd at the end of the 
flock, and the dog that is worrying the last sheep, would be 
just leaving the environs of Bristol, 121 miles away, as the 
first ten would pass him at Hyde Park Corner.” 
This is the requirement of London alone, with its popula¬ 
tion of three millions, while there still remain 16.995,000 
persons in other parts of England and Wales to be supplied 
by the British farmer, or his rival in other lands. 
Dr. Hitchman then proceeded to point out, by the aid of 
his drawings, the strange changes brought about in breeding 
in the colour, form, and habits of the rock dove, the almond 
tumbler, the carrier pigeon, the pouter, the fantail, and 
adduced them as interesting facts, showing how an arbitrary 
and artificial standard had been resolved upon and realised 
and maintained. Again, aided by drawings, the lecturer 
graphically pointed out the great contrast between the head 
of BakewelFs long horns and M‘Combie’s polled or hornless 
cow, the mountain ram and the Leicester sheep, the Irish pig 
and the English sow, and other specimens, and stated that 
the tendency is ever to revert, to go back to the original form. 
How have breeds been founded? Why has Charles Col- 
ling’s “ Hubback” (the grandsire of the bull “Comet”), 
picked up in a lane, or the “Godolphin Arabian” (the 
