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