“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, lines, curves, qualities and characteristics which those fingers, working, as it were, on the right wrist of Divine Providence, gave to the sheep and cattle upon a thousand hills in both hemispheres? There are flocks and herds now grazing upon the boundless prairies of America, the vast plains of Australia, the steppes of Russia, as well as on the smaller and greener pastures of England, France, and Germany, that bear these finger-marks of Jonas Webb, as mindless but everlasting memories to his worth. If the owners of these “well-created things” value the joy and profit which they thus derive from his long and laborious years of devotion to their interests, let them see that these finger-prints of his be not obliterated by their neglect, but be perpetuated for ever, both for their own good and for an ever-living memorial to his name.
It is a fact of instructive suggestion, that although Mr. Webb commenced his operations in 1822, he won his first prize for stock ewes at the meeting of the Royal Agricultural Society at Cambridge in 1840. Here he realised one of the serious disadvantages to which stock-breeders in England are exposed, in “showing” sheep, cattle or swine at these annual exhibitions. The great outside world, with tastes that lean more to fat sirloins or shoulders than to the better symmetries of animated nature, almost demands that every one of these unfortunate beasts should be offered up as a bloated, blowing sacrifice to those great twin idols of fleshy lust, Tallow and Lard. If, therefore, a stock-raiser has not decided to drive his Shorthorn cow or Southdown ewe immediately from the Fair-grounds to the butcher’s shambles, he runs an imminent risk of losing entirely the use and value of the animal. So great is this risk, that much of the stock that would be most useful for exhibition is withheld, and can only be seen by visiting private establishments scattered over the kingdom. They are too valuable to run the terrible gauntlet of oil-cake, bean and barley-meal, through which they must flounder on in cruel obesity to the prize. Especially is this the case with breeding animals. Mr. Webb’s experience at his first trial of the process, will illustrate its tendencies and results. Of the nine shearling ewes he “fed” for the Cambridge Show, he lost four, and only raised two or three lambs from the rest. At the Exhibition of 1841, at Liverpool, he won three out of four of the prizes offered by the Royal Agricultural Society for Southdowns, or any other short-woolled sheep; two out of four offered at Bristol, in 1842, and three out of four offered at Derby, in 1843. But here again he over-fed two of his best sheep, under the inexorable rule of fat, which exercises such despotic sway over these annual competitions, and was obliged to kill them before the show. It will suffice to show the loss he incurred by this costly homage to Tallow, to give his own words on the subject:—“I had refused 180 guineas for the hire of the two sheep for the season. I also quite destroyed the usefulness of two other aged sheep by over-feeding them last year. Neither of them propogated [sic] through the season, and I have had each of them killed in consequence, which has so completely tired me of overfeeding that I never intend exhibiting another aged ram, unless I greatly alter my mind, or can find out some method of feeding them which will not destroy the animals, and which I have hitherto failed to accomplish.” The conclusion which he adopted, in view of these liabilities, may be useful to agriculturists in America as well as in England. He says, “What I intend exhibiting in future will be shearlings only, as I believe they are not so easily injured by extra feeding as aged sheep, partly by being more active, and partly by having more time to put on their extra condition, by which their constitutions are not likely to be so much impaired.”
At nearly every subsequent national exhibition, Mr. Webb carried off the best prizes for Southdowns. At Dundee, in 1843, the Highland Society paid him the compliment of having the likenesses of his sheep taken for its museum in Edinburgh. He only received two checks in these competitions after 1840, and these he rectified and overcame in an interesting way. The first took place at the great meeting at Exeter, in 1850, and the second at Chelmsford, in 1856. On both of these occasions he was convinced that the judges had not done justice to the qualities of his animals, and he resolved to submit their judgment to a court of errors, or to the decision of a subsequent meeting of the society. So, in 1851, he presented the unsuccessful candidate at Exeter to the meeting at Windsor, and took the first prize for it. This fully reversed the Exeter verdict. He resorted to the same tribunal to set him right in regard to his apparent defeat at Chelmsford, in 1856. Next year he presented the ram beaten there to the Salisbury meeting, and another jury gave the animal the highest meed of merit.
It was at the zenith of his fame as a sheep-breeder that Mr. Webb “assisted,” as the French say, at the Universal Exposition at Paris, in 1855. Here his beautiful animals excited the liveliest admiration. The Emperor came himself to examine them, and expressed himself highly pleased at their splendid qualities. It was on this occasion that Mr. Webb presented to the Emperor his prize ram, for which, probably, he had refused the largest sum ever offered for a single animal of the same race, or 500 guineas ($2,500). The Emperor accepted the noble present, fully appreciating the spirit in which it was offered, and some time afterwards sent the generous breeder a magnificent candelabra, of solid silver, representing a grand, old English oak, with a group of horses shading themselves under its branches. This splendid token of the Emperor’s regard is only one of the numerous trophies and souvenirs that embellish the farmer’s home at Babraham, and which his children and remoter posterity will treasure as precious heirlooms.
If Mr. Webb did not originate, he developed a system of usefulness into a permanent and most valuable institution, which, perhaps, will be the most novel to American stock-raisers. Having, by a long course of scientific observations and experiments, fixed the qualities he desired to give his Southdowns; having brought them to the highest perfection, he now adopted a system which would most widely and cheaply diffuse the race thus cultivated all over the civilized world. He instituted an annual ram-letting, which took place in the month of July. This occasion constituted an important event to the great agricultural world. A few Americans have been present and witnessed the proceedings of these memorable days, and they know the interest attaching to them better than can be inferred from any description. M. De La Trehonnais, in the “Revue Agricole de l’Angleterre,” thus sketches some of the incidents and aspects of the occasion:—
“It is a proceeding regarded in England as a public event, and all the journals give an account of it with exact care, assembling from every county and even from foreign countries. The sale begins about two o’clock. A circle in formed with ropes in a small field near the mansion, where the rams are introduced, and an auctioneer announces the biddings, which are frequently very spirited. The rams to be let are exposed around the field from the first of the morning, and a ticket at the head of each pen indicates the weight of the fleece of the animal it contains. Every one takes his notes, chooses the animal he approves of, and can demand the last bidding when he pleases. The evening after the letting, the numerous company assembles under a rustic shed, ornamented with leaves and agricultural devices. There tables are laid, around which are placed two or three hundred guests, and then commences one of those antique repasts described by Homer or Rabelais. The tables groan under the enormous pieces of beef, gigantic hams, etc., which have almost disappeared before the commencement of the sale. From eight in the morning until two in the afternoon, tables laid out in the dining-room and hall are furnished, only to be refurnished immediately, the end being equal to the beginning.”
This description refers to the thirty-second letting. Mr. Webb’s flock then consisted of seven hundred breeding ewes, a proportionate number of lambs, and about four hundred rams of different ages. It was from these rams that the animals were selected which were sent into every country in the civilized world. The average price of their lettings was nearly £24 each, although some of the rams brought the sum of £180, or nearly nine hundred dollars! What would some of the old-fashioned farmers of New England, of forty years ago, think of paying nearly a thousand dollars for the rent of a ram for a single year, or even one-tenth of that sum? But this rentage was not a fancy price. The farmer who paid it got back his money many times over in the course of a few years. From this infusion of the Babraham blood into his flock, he realised an augmented production of mutton and wool annually per acre which he could count definitely by pounds. The verdict of his balance-sheet proved the profit of the investment. It would be impossible to measure the benefit which the whole world reaped from Mr. Webb’s labors in this department of usefulness. An eminent authority has stated that “it would be difficult, if not impossible, to find a Southdown flock of any reputation, in any country in the world, not closely allied with the Babraham flock.” It is a fact that illustrates the skill and care, as well as demonstrates the value of his system of improvement, that, after thirty-seven years as a breeder, the tribes he founded maintained to the last those distinguishing qualities which gave them such pre-eminence over all other sheep bearing the general name of the Sussex race. So valuable and distinctive were these qualities regarded by the best judges in the country, that the twelfth ram-letting, which took place at the time of the Cambridge Show, brought together 2,000 visitors, constituting, perhaps, the most distinguished assembly of agriculturists ever convened. On this occasion the Duke of Richmond, an hereditary and eminent breeder of Southdowns in their native county, bid a hundred guineas for a ram lamb, which Mr. Webb himself bought in.
Having attained to such eminence as a sheep-breeder, Mr. Webb entered upon another sphere of improvement, in which he won almost equal distinction. In 1837, he laid the foundation of the Babraham Herd of Shorthorn cattle, made up of six different tribes, purchased from the most valuable and celebrated branches of the race bearing that name. An incident attaching to one of these purchases may illustrate the nice care and cultivated skill which Mr. Webb exercised in the treatment of choice animals. He bought out of Lord Spencer’s herd the celebrated cow, “Dodona.” That eminent breeder, it appears, had given her up as irretrievably sterile, and he parted with her solely on that account. Mr. Webb, however, took her to Babraham, and, as a result of the more intelligent treatment he bestowed upon her, she produced successively four calves, which thus formed one of the most valuable families of the Babraham herd. When I visited the scene of his life and labors, all his sheep and cattle had been sold. But two or three animals bought by an Australian gentleman were still in the keeping of Mr. Webb’s son, awaiting arrangements for their transportation. One of these, a beautiful heifer of fourteen months, was purchased at the winding-up sale, for 225 guineas. It was called the “Drawing-room Rose,” from this circumstance, as I afterwards learned. When it was first dropped by the dam, Mr. Webb was confined to the house by indisposition. But he had such a desire to see this new accession to his bovine family, that he directed it to be brought into the drawing-room for that purpose. Hence it received a more elegant and domestic appellation than the variegated nomenclature of high-blooded animals often allows.
When the last volume of the “English Herd-Book” was about to be published, Mr. Webb sent for insertion a list of sixty-one cows, with their products. He generally kept from twenty to thirty bulls in his stalls.