Page:The Evolution of British Cattle.djvu/128

 parts of the country, and that the cows he bought from Mr. Webster of Canley were put to a bull from Westmoreland. From the time, however, when he obtained that Westmoreland bull, which was somewhere about 1760, Bakewell continued to put his own stock to his own, regardless of their relationship and of the custom and sentiment of the country. It must also be remembered that he had probably tried this system with sheep before adopting it with cattle.

Several reasons might be imagined for Bakewell having adopted the system of in-breeding. He was a great traveller, a close observer, and an unparalleled judge. He must have seen how animals came truer to their kind when bred pure, and how irregular were the progeny of cross-breds; and he may have argued that the mating of close relations was the very essence of pure breeding. Or he may have been a pre- Darwinian Darwinist, and argued that an accumulation of good qualities could only be secured by their continued infusion. Or, still more likely, failing to find a better bull than Twopenny—the produce of the Westmoreland bull and a Canley cow—and fearing to use a worse one, he may have been compelled, sentiment or no sentiment, to stick to his own. This view is supported by Marshall, who was deeper in Bakewell's confidence than any other writer, and who was, to some extent, the