MISCELLANEA. 307 
chosen July 10th, the Wednesday before the Royal Agricul¬ 
tural Society's meeting, for that purpose. 
It will be just five-and-thirty years next July since Mr. 
Webb entertained the guests at his first ram-letting. John 
Duke of Bedford, “ Richmond," “ Portland," and the Earl of 
Ducie, have all swelled that throng. “Two thousand, at 
least," says a writer in the Farmer’s Magazine , 66 rallied round 
Mr. Webb in the year of the Cambridge Royal meeting, and 
and it was then that the Duke of Richmond, with rare fore¬ 
sight, made his first 100-guinea offer for a ram lamb which 
was destined to win the head Royal prize at Liverpool and 
Bristol in succession, and finally to earn his name 4 Clumber' 
from the home of another noble hirer. Dick Gurney, the 
best f jockey of Norfolk' across the pastures of the Pytchley 
and Quorn, was not thought c too bold' when he offered 360 
guineas in vain for Thickthorn (whom he had hired the year 
before) and his sons Babraham and Cantab. The agents of 
crowned heads have also been busy each July in the new 
letting meadow; and the Emperor of the French paid his 
tribute to the ‘dark faces' at the Paris Exhibition of 1856, 
by the presentation of a piece of plate to Mr. Webb, with 
the c truly British' design of a couple of blood-mares and 
their foals standing under the shade of a gnarled ivy-grown 
oak." 
The old long-horned Norfolk rams, whose narrow backs 
and sharp spines proved such a very uncomfortable seat for 
Mr. Webb, when he used to ride them in his boyhood at 
West Wickham, and set him a thinking in his maturer years, 
live only in story at Babraham now; and not one even is kept 
as a relic. Originally there were three tribes, but a fourth 
and fifth have been added; and Mr. Webb never hires rams, 
as he can always keep the blood sufficiently distinct without 
it. In number the tribes are nearly equal, and they have all 
produced prize sheep; and from 120 to 140 rams have been 
let annually. Besides the elaborate ear-marks, and divers others 
on the shoulder and hip, they have cabalistic crosses of green 
above yellow, blue above red, and so forth, on their sides, 
which tell their descent at a glance to their owner’s eye, and 
furnish an unfailing clue when they rise to ram-hogget estate, 
and are ripe for entry in the flock-book. The Old 
Babraham shearlings nearly all averaged 8lbs.; and if their 
fleeces do not come up to 7lbs. the ewe-hoggets are sold to 
go abroad. 
Mr. Webb never sells ewes in England—he has a few from 
twelve to thirteen years old, and he has bred from them at 
fourteen; but the rams are seldom let beyond their seventh 
