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.

Nor were his labors confined even to the two great spheres of enterprise with which his name has been intimately and honorably associated.  If it was the great aim of his intelligent activities to produce stock which should yield the most meat to the acre, he also gave great attention to the augmented production of the land itself.  He was the principal originator and promoter of the great Agricultural Hall, in London, for the exhibition of the fat stock for the Smithfield Show.  This may be called the Crystal Palace of