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, 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