ROBERT BAKEWELL, SHEER BREEDER AND FARMER.

Otago Witness, Issue 2397, 8 February 1900, Page 4

ROBERT BAKEWELL, SHEER BREEDER AND FARMER.

Outside of, and even largely within, the United Kingdom, the name of Robert Bakewell is exclusively associated with the refinement effected by him in the breeds of English sheep aud as the founder of the " English Leicester " breed ; but, as was justly said of him by the author of the memoir published on the announcement of his death, " every branch of agricultural art was more or less indebted to him, his fortunate genius, and original mind.'' While the benefits are remembered which he has conferred upon the nations in the substantial results of his work, his breed of sheep having effected, in various degrees, through, many well-known crosses — and how many unacknowledged crosses no man can tell — the improvement of other breeds, it should also be remembered to his credit the wider distribution of the good originated in his discovery of a shorter and surer way than was befoie known to enlist in nvm'& service the laws aud powers of Nature. As Mr Win. Housman writes in his defence of Bakewell's reputation, published in, the R. A. Society's Journal for March, 1894:— "Had Bakewell been a man of higher education, we should have been the richer, no doubt, by his contributions to the literature of agriculture. But like other men of his educational level, he was more apt to act than tell clearly how he acted. There he was, perhaps, wisely silent. Yet others gleaned, and indirectly told, the secrets he was accused of studiously concealing. Men have been really for a century past following Bakewell's words and practice whilst denying that he had ever disclosed the ' mystery ' of his

success, and breeds superseding his own have risen from the use of knowledge which the world owes to Robert Bakewell. In the breeding of sheep, cattle, and draught horses — for to each he gave his attention — the correlation of form and certain propensities was one discovery upon which he is known to ha-ze acted ; the fact that under some conditions consanguineous breeding might be practised "with most advantageous results was another. Upon these two rules in stock-breeding, all the other parts of his system appear to hang."

Prom his father, who died in 1773, Bakewell had an excellent training for practical and experimental farming, besides many of those special mental qualities, possibly inherited immediately from him, or through him, which were manifested in his advance beyond the traditional notions and practice of the old English farmer. According to Arthur Young, who inspected the operations at Dishley on two occasions, with the space of 15 years between, the irrigation, which was one of the most prominent features of the Dishley husbandry, had been begun by Bakewell' s father. In quite early life, having developed to some extent his father's desire to discover and learn better methods of husbandry than those of his predecessors, and thirsting for knowledge of what men were doing and thinking elsewhere, Bakewell ofton left his home to travel about England, seeing the different breeds of farm stock, to find crat the purposes for which the breeds severally suited, and the conditions under which they served those purposes ; his main object, no doubt, being to ascertain what breeds would do best at Dishley. That such was his purpose appears to have been indicated by the fact that after looking around him in various districts, he selected a few choice specimens of different breeds, and took them to Dishley. Mr Bakewell saw much of the "West of England, where irrigation was, extensively prac. tised, and which he himself was destined to exteud on his own property. There, too, he found a breed of cattle — the Devon — which he pronounced incapable o f improvement by a cross of any other breed. This declaration, in connection with his own avowed principle of refining tLc bone as a means of getting a greater proportion of flesh to food consumed, and a greatpr tendency to fatten, suggests the probability that the Devon served as his model for" the improvement of the larger breed of cattle which heiadopced as a breed already established in the Midlands. The same model would also sers-c: his design of founding an improved breed of sheep, for the same principle of lessening the bone to increase the fattening propensity was applied by him to all classes of butchers' beasts.

In the consideration of +he work for which he is. recognised as a man of distinguished power — Ms improvement ci sheep and cattle — a. glance at his general husbandry, as described in Mr Housman's cgs-iy, will be found useful in assisting us to better gauge the man. His .great prevailing idea, and that which lay at the very root of his strength, was economy. If the Devon really was his model — and he assuredly admiral it, he had in it economy both in structure and in the proportion oi the cost to the quantity and quality of human food .produced ; or, say, in the return per acre. The English farms which he most admired were those of Norfolk, where he found " cheap, expeditious, and effective modes of husbandly," the foreign farms — for he occasionally went abroad to enlarge his kuowledge — those of Holland and Manders, where he found that orderly neatness which is true economy, inasmuch as slovenly farming is wasteful. Upon the principles of management of these British and Continental farms he is understood to have founded his own system at Dishley. Following the testimony of the different visitors to Dishley who have recorded their impressions, Mr Housman says they saw " the most scrupulous neatness, order, regularity ; ingenious time-saving appliances, ; the cheapest ways of doing efficiently the ordinary work of the farm : in short, at all points rigid economy." When Arthur Young was at Dishley, in the course of his celebrated tour through the East of England in 1770. the farm comprised °AQ acre,«, of which 110 were under the plough. The proportions of white and root crops were generally about 15 acres of "wheat, 25 of spring corn, and not more than 30 of turnips. The rest of the farm (330 acres, less the sites of buildings, the yards, watercourses, etc.) was all grass land. Bakewell is classed 'by Marshall as having stood first in the Kingdom as an improver of grass land by watering : and in Monk's Agricultural report it is stated that by means of irrigation he was enabled to cut grass four times a yeir. He describes the water meadows, from 60 acres to 80 acres, as having been, like the rest of the country, all in ridge and furrow, covered with anthills and disfigured by irregularities of surface. These Bakewell had ploughed up, thoroughly tilled, and laid down again to grass with a perfectly even surface ; while the oldtime farmers around stared at an operation which they said was " burying 'good land to bring up bad, 1 ' and were filled with alarm lest his overflow should " poison " their rough, untidy lands, even threatening, and one chronicler declares, actually commencing legal proceedings to restrain him. "Our farmer," Arthur Young remarks, "has expended large sums in these uncommon undertakings ; he richly merits the enjoyment of their profit." The meadows seen by this authority when he first visited Dishley did not, however, comprise one-half of the land — 200 acres — which was eventually irrigated.

Economy in the use of straw vras a great point with Bake-well, and he was stronglyopposed to the practice of having the straw trodden down in yards, for he regarded it as of much greater value as a fertiliser, after it hud .served the purpose of food. The difficulty of inducing cattle to eat \ip straw without waste may occur to the reader. This was overcome by giving only a small quantity at each feed. The animal, eating with a 'relish and keen appetite, would not leave any, and not having at one feed fully satisfied its hunger, was always prepared to clear up the next feed to the last straw. All lean cattle in winter — from November to the end of March — had straw as their only food ; young cattle reauii > in& to be

kept in a growing and thriving state, >anci cattle in process of fattening likewise had straw and turnips until the turnips were finished in spring.Neither cuttle nor straw was bought,yet the cattle all looked well, and the usual' numbers of the different kinds of stock upon the farm were 60 horses, 400 large sheep, and 150 head of cattle, all sorts and ages counted. More than once 170 of the lattec were wintered.

It has been shown that in the case of his irrigated land, Mr Bakewell tested the worth of his notions by frequent and varied experiment. He did the same in every department of the farm. He did not try to make facts square •with his opinions, but his opinions with facts. This was the grand source of his power. His animals in their lifetime were often submitted to experiment to prove their rate of increase in proportion to food consumed ; and after/ their death, to examination of the quality of their flesh, and proportion of flesh to offal. Skeletons and pickled joints of specimens of the best of the Dishley sheep and cattle formed a little museum of one generation with another, ancestors with their descendants. The degree of fineness of bone, the size and shape of the frame, the thickness of the layers of muscle, and the depth of outside fat and quantity of inside fat were thus brought under notice,... and any change for the better or -worse was^ recognised in time to serve as a guide to the breeder. The question of the principles recognised by Bakewell in founding the English Leicester breed of sheep is reserved for an article to follow.