THE SHEEP. 
69 
THE NEW LEICESTER BREED. 
of practice do they need to exceed the age of two years and a few months, whereas the older breeds were not usually fattened for 
the market until late in their third, or until their fourth year. The females are not regarded as so prolific as those of the older 
breeds, nor are the lambs so hardy or quickly covered with a coat of wool, nor are the mothers such good nurses; and yet the 
breed is not deficient in these properties, except where such refinement of breeding has been practised as to produce a too delicate 
temperament. In this breed the hind and fore quarters more nearly approximate in weight than in the less cultivated varieties. 
The fatty tissue, too, is more equally spread over the external muscles, and tends to accumulate less about the kidneys and inter¬ 
nal parts, and hence the breed has never been so much a favourite with the butchers as the less improved races. The flesh, as of 
all the long-woolled breeds, is more lax in the fibre, and less delicate, than that of the smaller breeds of the mountains, forests, and 
downs ; but the mutton does not seem in any respect to have been inferior to that of the older breeds of the same class. 
Mr Bakewell, it has been said, early conceived the idea of letting his rams on hire in place of selling them to the breeders. 
The animals were exhibited at Dishley at a stated time, in the latter end of July, or beginning of August; and the hirers put their 
own valuation on the rams they selected, and the offers were accepted or refused, without any auction. Certain conditions were 
understood or stipulated for, but no written legal agreement was made, every thing being trusted to the honour of the parties. 
About the middle of September, the animals were sent to their destination in carriages hung on springs, and about the beginning 
of December, the hirer was expected to return them in safety ; but if a ram died from any cause while in the hands of the hirer, 
the loss fell upon the owner. The whole system manifested a wonderful degree of confidence and mutual good faith, and contri¬ 
buted in an essential degree to the diffusion of the new breed. Contemporaries and successors of Mr Bakewell adopted the same 
plan, and the sums expended by distant breeders in procuring, by this simple mean, the new breed of which Leicester was the 
centre, were surprisingly great. Up to the present time the practice has been carried on by breeders of the first distinction, some 
of whom acquired the unrivalled stock of Bakewell after his death, and are understood to have preserved it unmixed to the 
present hour. Nor was this system long confined to the county of Leicester, but it extended to other parts of the kingdom. Mr 
Culley, who had been a pupil of Bakewell’s, early established it on the large scale in the north of England in the county of 
Northumberland, and various breeders, whose stock had acquired the necessary breeding and reputation, adopted it; so that there 
was scarcely a district of the Long-woolled Sheep in which one or more breeders did not pursue the practice of letting rams. Not 
only did the system facilitate the diffusion of the new breed, but it contributed in an eminent degree to maintain its purity and 
goodness. It even enabled a certain class of breeders to direct attention to the rearing of rams as a distinct profession, and thus 
created a division of labour in the practice of breeding singularly conducive to its perfection. 
The formation of the New Leicester Breed of Sheep may be said to form an era in the economical history of the domestic 
animals, and may well confer distinction on the individual who had genius to conceive, and fortitude to perfect, the design. The 
result was not only the creation of a breed by art, but the establishment of principles which are of universal application in the 
production of animals for human food. It has shown that there are other properties than size, and the kind and abundance of the 
wool, which render a race of sheep profitable to the breeder; that a disposition to assimilate nourishment readily, and arrive at 
early maturity, are properties to be essentially regarded ; and that these properties have a constant relation to a given form, which 
can be communicated from the parents to the young, and rendered permanent by a mixture of the blood of the animals to which this 
form has been transmitted. Bakewell, doubtless, carried his principles to the limits to which they could be carried with safety and 
profit to the owner of Sheep. Looking to symmetry and usefulness of form as the essential characters to be cultivated, he was 
too apt to regard the others, not merely as secondary, but as unimportant. He is reported to have said that he did not care whe¬ 
ther his Sheep produced wool at all, and he endeavoured on all occasions to show the inutility of size as compared with the fat¬ 
tening property. But a close and abundant growth of wool, it is known, is connected with a healthy state of the system, and 
with the power of the animals to resist cold and atmospheric changes, and a certain size is found by the experience of all breeders 
of Sheep to be an element in the profit to be derived from them. Every owner of Sheep is taught by the result, that an animal 
of a size to fatten to 40 lb. the quarter is more profitable than one that is capable of reaching only to 30 lb. in the same time. 
Weight of body, therefore, and the nature and productiveness of the fleece, are not to be overlooked in the cultivation of Sheep ; 
and although they may be regarded as secondary properties, they cannot be held to be unimportant ones. But if Bakewell 
carried his principles of breeding to an extreme, there is no reason why his successors should not now profit by the knowledge 
acquired by observation and experience, and cultivate a profitable size and suitable fleece, as far as these consist with the other 
properties sought for. Bakewell was compelled in a sense to confine himself to his own stock, and to the blood of one family, 
in order to preserve that standard of form which he had produced. From the subsequent multiplication of the New Leicester 
Breed, modern breeders are relieved from all necessity of this kind. They can obtain individuals of the form required from dif¬ 
ferent families of the same breed, and need never, by a continued adherence to the blood of one family, produce animals too deli— 
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