The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1848-06-06 00:00:00

ANECDOTE OF THE FAR-FAMED MR. ROBT,
BAKEWELL.

The celebrated Mr. Robert Bakewell, of Dishley, in
Leicestershire, and the founder of the New Leicester
Sheep, used to tell an anecdote with exceedingly high
glee, of a farmer not only of the olden school, but of the
golden times. This farmer, who owned and occupied
1,000 acres of land, had three daughters. When his
eldest daughter married, he gave her one quarter of his
land for her portion, but no money; and he found, by a
little more speed and little better management, the pro-
duce of his farm did not decrease. When his second
daughter married, he gave her one-third of the remaining
land for her portion, but no money. He then set to work
and began to grub up his furze and fern, and ploughed
up what he called his poor dry furze land ; nay, and when
the furze covered in some closes nearly half the land.
After giving half his land away to two of his daughters,
to his great surprise he found that the produce increased ;
he made more money because his new broken up furze
land brought excessive crops, and at the same time he
farmed the whole of his land better, for he employed three
times more labourers upon it; he rose two hours sooner
in the morning, had no more dead follows once in three
years, instead of which he got two green crops in one
year, and ate them upon the land. A garden never re-
quires a dead fallow. But the great advantage was, that
he had got the same money to manage 500 acres as he
had to manage 1000 acres ; therefore he laid out double
the money upon the land. When his third and last
daughter married, he gave her 250 acres, or the half
which remained, for her portion, and no money. He
then found that he had the same money to farm one
quarter of the land as he had first to farm the whole. He
began to ask himself a few questions, and set his wits to
work how he was to make as much of 250 as he had done
of 1,000 acres. He then paid off his bailiff, who weighed
twenty stone; rose with the lark in the long days, and
went to bed with the lamb : he got as much more work
done for his money : he made his servants, labourers, and
horses move faster; broke them from their snail's pace, and
found the eye of the master quickened the pace of the ser-
vant. He saw the beginning and the ending of everything;
and to his servants and labourers, instead of saying—" Go
and do it," he said to them—" Let us go, my boys, and
do it." Between come and go, he soon found out a great
difference. He grubbed up the whole of his furze and
ferns, and ploughed the whole of his poor grass land up,
and converted a great deal of corn into meat for the sake
of the manure, and he preserved his blackwater (the
essence of manure); cut his hedges down, which had not
been plashed for forty or fiffy years ; straightened his zig-
zag fences ; cut his watercourses straight, and gained a
deal of land by doing so ; made dams and sluices, and ir-
rigated all the land he could ; he grubbed up many of his
hedges and borders covered with bushes, in some places
from ten to fourteen yards in width, some more in his
small closes, some not wider than streets ; and threw
three, four, five, and six closes into one. He found out,
instead of growing whitethorn hedges and haws to feed
foreign birds in the winter, he could grow food for man,
instead of migratory birds. After all this improvement,
he grew more, and made more of 250 acres than lie did
from 1,000; at the same time, he found out that half
England at that time was not cultivated from the want of
the means to cultivate it with. I let him rams, and sold
him long-horned bulls (said Mr. Bakewell), and told him
the value of labour, both in-doors and out, and what
ought to be done with a certain number of men, oxen, and
horses within a given time. I taught him to sow less and
plough better ; that there were limits and measures to all
things ; and that the husbandman ought to be stronger
than the farm. I told him how to make hot land colder,
and cold land hotter; light land stiffer, and stiff land
lighter. I soon caused him to shake off his old deep-
rooted prejudices, and I grafted new ones in their places.
I told him not to breed inferior cattle, sheep, or horses,
but the best of each kind, for the best consumed no more
than the worst. My friend became a new man in his old
age, and died rich : whilst I bred cattle, sheep, and black