STATE AGRICULTURAL SOCIETY. Yl 



change. As a consequence, money was exceedingly scarce, and peo- 

 ple had no means, and but little heart to engage in recreation. Had 

 the fair taken place two months later, when the excitement of the 

 election had worn away, and when prices had improved and business 

 prospects greatly brightened, the attendance would have been much 

 greater, and the financial exhibit for the year would have been 

 improved in proportion, and probably the debt of the Society would 

 have been paid off in full. In looking over the list of entries of stock 

 at our fairs for the last eight or ten years, it will be seen that though 

 tlie exhibitions in respect to numbers of animals and the quality of 

 the same have been quite creditable to the Society and the State, yet 

 the number of owners of stock represented in these exhibitions is 

 insignificantly small — a standing reproach to the Society and the 

 State. 



Taking the exhibition of 1878 — one of the fullest and best ever 

 made by the Society in the stock department — it will serve as a good 

 illustration of the above statement. There were that year but fifteen 

 different exhibitors of thoroughbred horses, and the whole number of 

 exhibitors in the horse department was but ninety-three. In this 

 statement we do not include the large number of very superior horses 

 that were entered in the running and trotting races, and not exhib- 

 ited for the class premiums of the Society. The races have always 

 been, and we trust will continue to be, an interesting and popular 

 part of our fairs. In the cattle department of the same year there 

 were but eleven exhibitors of thoroughbred short-horn cattle, eight 

 exhibitors of Alderneys and Jerseys, and three exhibitors of thorough- 

 bred cattle of all other breeds, and all the horned cattle exhibited at 

 the fair that season were owned by twenty-five different persons. In 

 the sheep department there were but three exhibitors of Spanish 

 merino sheep, one exhibitor of French merino, and four exhibitors 

 in all other grades — making but eight exhibitors of sheep at the fair. 

 Of Angora goats there were seven exhibitors, of swine eight, and of 

 poultry nine. From the above analysis it will be seen that 160 per- 

 sons made up the entire stock exhibition of the fair of 1878 — as we 

 said before, one of the best and largest stock exhibitions the Society 

 has ever made. Another important fact connected with these exhi- 

 bitions is, that the persons who made the principal exhibitions of 

 stock at the fair we are analyzing have been the principal exhibitors 

 in the stock department for the last ten years, and have carried away 

 by far the largest proportion of the money offered by the Society as 

 premiuins in the stock department. The Board have no word of 

 complaint towards these successful exhibitors of stock. On the con- 

 trary, the-ir enterprise, energy, and success in breeding is highly com- 

 mended, and the management of the Society should at all times be so 

 shaped as to induce them to even greater efforts to improvement in 

 the future than they have exerted in the past. Notwithstanding, it 

 is to be regretted that the Society has not been able to call out a more 

 general interest and a greater number of exhibitors, and a more gen- 

 eral representation of the real practical stock-breeding industries of 

 the State. It should be the care and aim of the Society not to encour- 

 age the pampering of a few herds or a few hundred animals for the 

 purpose of a fine show, but to breed up and improve the quality and 

 enhance the value of each and every class of domestic animals; to 

 elevate the general standard of excellence of all the stock in the State; 

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