Some of these farmers were doing their share in helping the progress of agriculture.  In 1764 Joseph Elkington, of Princethorpe in Warwickshire, was the first to practise the under drainage of sloping land that was drowned by the bursting of springs.  He drained some fields at Princethorpe which were very wet, and dug a trench 4 or 5 feet deep for this purpose; but finding this did not reach the principal body of subjacent water, he drove an iron bar 4 feet below the bottom of his trench and on withdrawing it the water gushed out.  He was thus led to combine the system of cutting drains, aided when necessary by auger holes.  His main principles were three:  (1) Finding the main spring, or cause of the mischief. (2) Taking the level of that spring and ascertaining its subterranean bearings, for if the drain is cut a yard below the line of the spring the water issuing from it cannot be reached, but on ascertaining the line by levelling the spring can be cut effectually. (3) Using the auger to tap the spring when the drain was not deep enough for the purpose.[483] It was owing to the Board of Agriculture at the end of the century that he obtained the vote of L1,000 from Parliament, and a skilful surveyor was appointed to observe his methods and give them to the public, for he was too ignorant himself to give an intelligible account of his system.  After the publication of the report his system was followed generally until Smith of Deanston in 1835 gave the method now in use to his country.

Robert Bakewell, who did more to improve live stock than any other man, was born at Dishley, Leicestershire, in 1735, and succeeding to the management of his father’s farm in 1760 began to make experiments in breeding.[484] He scorned the old idea that the blood must be constantly varied by the mixture of different breeds, and his new system differed from the old in two chief points:  (1) small versus large bone, and consequently a greater proportion of flesh and a greater tendency to fatten; (2) permissible in-breeding versus perpetual crossing with strange breeds.  He took immense pains in selecting the best animals to breed from, and had at Dishley a museum of skeletons and pickled specimens for the comparison of one generation with another, and he conducted careful post-mortem examinations on his stock.  His great production was the new Leicester breed of sheep,[485] which in half a century spread over every part of the United Kingdom, as well as to Europe and America, and gave England 2 lb. of meat where she had one before.  Sheep at this time were divided into two main classes:  (1) short-woolled or field sheep, fed in the open fields; (2) long-woolled or pasture sheep, fed in enclosures.  That they were not at a very high state of perfection may be gathered from this description of the chief variety of the latter, the ‘Warwickshire’ breed:  ’his frame large and loose, his bones heavy, his legs long and thick, his chine as well as his rump as sharp as a hatchet, his skin rattling on his ribs