70 
THE SHEEP. 
THE NEW LEICESTER BREED. 
cate in form, deficient in weight of wool, and in that hardiness and soundness of constitution, which are even more necessary than 
the perfectness of individual form for the safety and profit of the breeder. The sacrifice of the secondary properties which Bake- 
well did not hesitate to make, was the result of circumstances which do not now exist; and the present feeling of breeders is to main¬ 
tain a larger and more robust form of the animals than seemed good to the earlier improvers. Thus the Cotswold Breed of Sheep, 
though far inferior in form to the pure New Leicester, is maintaining a successful rivalship with it over a large extent of country : 
the lowland Gloucestershire, the Devonshire, and many of the Lincolnshire agriculturists, are propagating a larger race than is 
approved of by the Leicester breeders; and even in the north of England, where the Leicester Breed was early established, a 
heavier race is preferred to the purest of the Dishley stock. 
But whatever diversities of opinion may exist with respect to the degree of breeding, as it may be called, which it is advisable 
to communicate to the several varieties of Sheep now comprehended under the common denomination of Leicester, no doubt can 
be entertained of the vast benefits conferred on the breeders of the country by the formation and diffusion of the beautiful breed 
of Bakewell. Its superiority over all the older races of the long-woolled districts is attested by the degree in which it supplanted 
them, and the eagerness with which it was everywhere received. In less than fifty years from the first establishment of the shows 
of Dishley, it had either superseded all the older Long-woolled Sheep of the country, or been so mingled with them in blood as to 
have effaced their former distinctions. Not only did it supplant or become mixed with the older races of heavy Sheep, but after 
a time it effected an important change in a great part of the lighter Sheep of the country. In many cases it has become mixed 
in blood with them, and in many it has caused a substitution of the heavy-woolled for the light over large tracts of country, so 
that entire districts, which little more than twenty years ago were stocked with the short-woolled breeds, have not now one flock 
of them remaining. In every way, then, the diffusion of this breed has added to the value of the live stock of the country. It 
has caused a superior race of animals to be reared in former districts of the down and forest breeds, and extended over the richer 
country one more suited for general cultivation than the older and coarser races, and has been the means of communicating to the 
former varieties of Long-woolled Sheep a uniformity of character eminently favourable to farther improvement by multiplying 
the animals of a given breed which can be selected for breeding. It has even improved the agriculture of the country in an emi¬ 
nent degree, by calling forth a larger production of forage and herbage plants for supplying food to a superior race of animals. 
Objections have been from time to time urged against the extension of this breed, founded on its supposed inferiority in size, 
in growth of wool, in hardiness, and fecundity of the females, to some of the breeds which it supplanted. The inferiority in size 
has been generally exaggerated with relation to this breed, and in all cases it produces a greater weight with the same bulk of 
body; and even where it is deficient in weight, there has been a compensation in that tendency to arrive at an earlier maturity, 
in which it eminently excels all the races which have preceded it. If the wool shall be less in quantity, or inferior in certain pro¬ 
perties, to that of some of the older varieties, it must not be forgotten, that the most esteemed of these varieties, as the Old Lin¬ 
coln and Teeswater, were not suited for that extensive diffusion, which has given so great a public importance to the breed of 
Bakewell, and that the extension of the new breed has added prodigiously to the total quantity and value of the long wool pro¬ 
duced in the country. With respect to the supposed deficiency of this breed in hardiness, and fecundity of the females, it is to 
be observed, that this, where it really exists, is the result of that refinement in breeding which would equally affect any race of 
Sheep subjected to the same treatment. The more we remove a race of animals from the natural state by stimulating the system 
to an early maturity, the more we may expect them to lose that hardiness which is proper to them in a ruder condition. The 
New Leicester is a breed of artificial formation, and its establishment and maintenance infer a certain advancement in agriculture, 
the due supply of cultivated food, and that care of the animals which their acquired habits and temperament demand. It is not 
denied that the New Leicester breed is more delicate and less prolific than some of the coarser races whose place it has taken; 
but these defects exist only in a degree to be injurious where refinement of breeding is carried to an excess which every breeder 
has now the power to avoid. 
