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red from the process to the breeding of cattle; and he became nearly as eminent in this field of improvement as in the other. A few facts may serve as an outline of his progress in both to the American reader who is familiar with the general result of his efforts. Jonas Webb was born at Great Thurlow, Suffolk, on the 10th of November, 1796. His father, who died at the age of ninety-three, was a veteran in agriculture, and had attained to honorable distinction by his efforts to improve the old Norfolk breed of sheep, and by his experiments with other races. The results obtained from these operations convinced his son that more mutton and better wool could be made per acre from the Southdown than from any other breed, upon nine-tenths of the arable land of England, where the sheep are regularly folded, especially where the land is poor. In 1822, he commenced that agricultural career which won for him such a world-wide celebrity, by taking the Babraham Farm, occupying about 1,000 acres, some twelve miles south of Cambridge. In a very interesting letter, addressed to the Farmers' Magazine, about twenty years since, he gives a valuable resume of his experience up to that time. In this he states several facts that may be especially useful to American agriculturists. Having decided in his own mind that the Southdowns were preferable to every other breed, for the two properties mentioned, he went into Sussex, their native county, and purchased the best rams and ewes that could be obtained of the principal breeders, regardless of expense, and never made a cross from any other breed afterwards. Nor was this all; he never introduced new blood into his stock from flocks of the same breed, but, by a virtually in-and-in process, he was able to produce qualities till then unknown to the race, and to make them permanent and distinctive properties. Now this achievement in itself has an interest beyond its utilitarian value to the agricultural world. To "Rejoice in the joy of well-created things" is one of the best privileges and pleasures of a well-constituted mind. But what higher honor can attach to human science or industry than that of taking such a visible and effective part in that creation?--in sending out into the world successive generations of animal life, bearing each, through future ages and distant countries, the shaping impress of human fingers, long since gone back to their dust; features, forms, lin
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