xxxviii KEPORTS OF DELEGATES. 



classes freely with individuals ; and Shorthorns, Ayrshires and Jer- 

 seys, handsome horses and colts, American Merino sheep, swine 

 and their varieties, including a Poland China boar and sow, and a 

 Madagascar boar, Berkshires and Chesters ; and fowls, from the Hou- 

 dans, Crevecoeurs, Brahmas, to the common barnyard, contributing 

 to give variety and interest to the exhibition. 



Your delegate was glad to learn that the ploughing matches 

 with ox teams and horses, and the drawing matches and trials of 

 forking horses were numerous and well attended, though for that 

 matter, anything connected with a match, from a wedding, horse 

 trot, trial of skill, to noisy lucifers, has a tendency to attract Amer- 

 ican citizens of larger as well as smaller growth. Yet these plough- 

 ing matches seem to be of peculiar interest in the more eastern 

 societies of the State, and in several, supersede the supposed neces- 

 sity of permanent tracks for trials of horses' speed, giving them for 

 that reason extraordinary value to the true agriculturist. Yet 

 judging from the expensive character of the track of the Bristol 

 County fair, the amount of money annually expended upon it, the 

 liberal awards for speed, the full attendance at the last day, the 

 horse cuts no diminutive figure in its programme, and if racing is 

 not the principal attraction, it is not one of the minor ones. But 

 we are indisposed to be too critical upon this point, even in a se- 

 verely agricultural view. Leaving out of consideration the claims 

 of breeders of horses in remote parts of the State, the attractions 

 of a fair must, to a great extent, be arranged according to the posi- 

 tion of the exhibition, and in the vicinity of large towns or manu- 

 facturing centres, it may be most expedient to give a liberal encour- 

 agement to trials of the horse's speed, trusting that those who 

 would not otherwise come to the fair, may, when inside, be led to 

 the study of something more ennobling, and at any rate be able 

 there to gratify decently an appetite for their favorite pastime, 

 without pursuing it in places where vices and vicious persons most 

 do congregate. 



" A primrose by a river's brim, 



A yellow primrose is " — to most folks, 

 "And nothing m.re." 



And it is impossible to implant into every mind, and especially into 

 the untutored, tired minds of the daily workers for bread, — the ten- 

 hour toilers, — a taste for merely agricultural or mechanical shows, 

 and they need the stimulus of some pleasant excitement ; and the 

 exhibition of horses' speed to them, after the work of the rest of the 

 week, is equivalent to the light literature of the jaded student, or 



