Page:The Evolution of British Cattle.djvu/133

 breeding which Bakewell established must be a wrong one, since the breed which he did so much to improve, and which at one time overran a great part of England and almost the whole of Ireland was well-nigh extinct within a century of the time when Bakewell was in his zenith. But it must be remembered that another type of animal has been in demand since Bakewell's day. The Longhorns were graziers' cattle—slow to mature as we now understand them, and capable of withstanding the severity of winter in the open air. The great increase of tillage farming in the east of England and of dairy farming in the neighbourhood of large cities demanded a bullock that would turn turnips and straw quickly into beef in a stall or covered shed and a cow that also in the house would produce a large quantity of milk and afterwards fatten quickly. If only for its horns alone, the Longhorn was not the animal to meet this demand.

But the greatest argument for the Bakewellian system is that the breeds that superseded the Longhorn were originated, and have been maintained, in the same manner. Besides, to say nothing of his horses, the blood of Bakewell's Leicester sheep, which were equally or more in-bred than his cattle, now flows in the veins of every "longwooled" sheep that trots, and is still alive in almost absolute purity in two breeds—the Leicesters and the Border Leicesters.