Page:The Evolution of British Cattle.djvu/127

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BAKEWELL
115

degree. He never altered the routine of his daily life. 'Breakfast at eight; dinner at one; supper at nine; bed at eleven o'clock; at half-past ten, let who would be there, he knocked out his last pipe.'" Clearly another Miller o' Dee: "I care for nobody, no, not I, and nobody cares for me ": the kind of man who, having discovered his way, would stick to it!

For his time and occupation, Bakewell was a great traveller. In early life he "often left his home to travel about England." "He saw much of the west of England"; he saw the north - west and the south - west; he saw Yorkshire, Lincolnshire, and Norfolk; and he also travelled in Holland. Whether he travelled to find or travelled and found cannot now be told—probably he did both—but at one time and another he brought home the choicest of their stock from several of the places he visited: cattle from the borders of Westmoreland, Lancashire, and Yorkshire, sheep from Yorkshire and Lincolnshire, and horses from Holland. Here we are concerned only with cattle.

One statement regarding Bakewell, namely, that he thought the Devon cattle incapable of improvement by crossing with any other breed, indicates that, at one time, Bakewell held his neighbours' views as to how cattle should be improved, and this is confirmed by the fact that his stock were gathered from herds in different