THE FARMER'S MAGAZINE, 



417 



and which with aome others only served to add lustre to the 

 triumph of one of our southern breeders, Mr. William Copnin- 

 ger. That our friends on the other side of the channel have 

 profited by such lessons is evident, as when our entries closed 

 before the All-England show, our catalogues contained plenty 

 of names of parties who never had a beast at any of the shows, 

 the winners in England only coming. If you wish then to give 

 our breeders a fair field, you must move not alone yotir entries, 

 but also your show, before the All-England one ; and I can see 

 BO objection to so doing. It may be said, we would have no 

 English exhibitors at our shows, and that we could not do 

 without them ; but the Dublin Society's catalogue will prove 

 the fallacy of this argument ; as we have always three or four 

 English or Scotch exhibitors there, and consequently more 

 than ever attend the shows of the Royal Agricultural Improve- 

 ment Society ; and it would not only bring us into a more 

 convenient time of the year, but would turn the tables, and 

 give US an opportunity of testing ourselves at home, and thus 

 tend, when we had any thing worth while, to embolden us to 

 repay some of the mauy visits we 0!?e across the channel. 

 Now ycu must not think I consider even with these changes 

 that a great part of our prizes would not go to England and 

 Scotland. Such an expectation would be unreasonable, when 

 we know that there are at least seven times the number of 

 ahort-horns bred in the sister kingdom (I mean show-going 

 ones) that there are here; and, when we add to this, that they 

 have some two or three men of such long-standing and known 

 perseverance that we cannot count one fit to match them ; and 

 when we also know that two of our best men (and two is a 

 mighty loss in such a struggle) never or rarely exhibit, except 

 yearlings at the Royal Dublin Society's shows, it would be 

 unreasonable to expect we could have it all our own way ; but 

 what I maintain it would do is, that through the eagerness of 

 the English breeders to reap laurels among us, it would always 

 supply us with a fair sample (not a picked one, as at present) 

 of the English show-going short-horns, and afford us a full 

 opportunity of occasionally beating them, and always give the 

 world a fair standard to judge from of the relative merits of 

 the stock of each country, and afford our young breeders a 

 good chance of gathering laurels (and one thus won in open 

 competition would be worth a dozen sullied by the shades of a 

 protection clause), without being subject to the certainty of 

 the overwhelmiug pressure of the presence of the champions of 

 the All-England meeting, who derive such an additional lustre 

 from coming thus before our judges arrayed in all their late 

 triumphs, that to over them with equally good animals would 

 be impossible. 



With regard to the system carried out with some of our 

 show stock, the only thing I see fairly to find fault with is, that 

 some men, with large and valuable herds, deeply interested in 

 keeping up an old and well-established reputation, or in en- 

 deavouring to start a new one, find it their interest to put up, 

 we will say, a pair of two year olds and a pair of three year 

 old heifers (I leave out yearlings as they cannot be injured, and 

 cows that have once gone through the ordeal as two and three 

 year olds will seldom break down, under judicious management) 

 and face them forward regar'Uesa of all consequences. That 

 the injurious results of this system have been deeply felt, is 

 evident, from all that has been said and done to check the over- 

 feeding of show stock ; and that anything that has as yet been 

 done to bring it to a stop, has proved quite ineffectual, is just 

 as certain. It is not to be wondered at that the jury and dis- 

 qualifying system would not answer ; as, after all, the best and 

 only true test, of the real superiority of a short-horn, is the 

 amount of flesh it can carry, and still naturally and regularly 

 produce its produce; it is not, then, itiange that all the 



mighty efforts made to put down the over-feeding system have 

 dwindled into a mere inquiry as to from what time the heifer 

 is in calf, and a regulation that the prize shall be withheld until 

 such calf be produced ; and in the case of cows and heifer in 

 milk, a simple inquiry as to the date of the production of the 

 last live calf. Now, the fault of this check lies in the fact, 

 that the parties thus exhibiting first, secure all they require in 

 the blash and notoriety they gain at the show. For what 

 check on such men, as in the very animals they thus force 

 forward, first risk hundreds, can possibly be the after with- 

 holding of a paltry five pouud prize, which nobody hears of 

 and none care about. In the case of three year old heifers the 

 thing takes another turn and one easier of cure, for though 

 they all fulfil the stipulations of the society, as far as being 

 able to give a date on which a live calf was produced ; still (do 

 not start, captain), scarce a fifth- part of them in reality fulfil 

 the stipulations of the society, inasmuch as scarce any of 

 them produce their live calves in such a state as it is possible 

 to rear them. If the loss stopped here, it would not press even 

 so hard on beginners and parties with but a few animals, as it 

 in reality does ; as one might well ruu the risk of sacrificing 

 a calf for the honour of winning an All-England first prize ; 

 but, unfortunately, it does not stop here, for when a three year 

 old heifer goes wrong in this way, from over-feeding, up to the 

 last moment, she is very apt to go wrong altogether. It may, 

 however, be thought the deep losses in such cases would be 

 their own cure — and so they are in all ordinary cases ; but, 

 when we have men with large herds, and laiger fortunes at 

 their back; and when we have one whose reputation for 

 Superior stock brings them in, for the use of the bulls of the 

 herd alone, no less than £5,000 a year, we need not be 

 surprised that the feverish excitement got up about the great 

 superiority of such stock must be maintained at any cost ; 

 though, in some cases, the expense is even a Bride's Maid, and 

 in others nothing less than the total ruin of that handsomest 

 short-horn that ever decked an English herd — The Queeu 

 of the May. 



Now that such an over feeding, or as I may call it, such 

 expenditure for show-yard honours, tells heavily on all begin- 

 ners, and in fact, on all who have not large herds and vast pro- 

 perty, to enable them to make such sacrifice, no one can for a 

 moment doubt ; and I can assure you I have before now felt, 

 and am likely to again feel, the great pressure of such a state 

 of things ; and to prove that stock exhibited under such cir- 

 cumstances are not on even terms of competition, and that 

 those that are, force feed to such a degree, that it is not pos- 

 sible to rear their live calves, have always the best of it. I 

 shall give you but three instances out of the many that have 

 come under my personal knowledge, and in so doing shall con- 

 fine my remarks to cases of my own with Mr. Campion, so as to 

 avoid as much as possible the unpleasant task of meddling 

 with others. The first I shall mention is, perhaps, the 

 strongest case on record, as it is the only one I ever heard of, 

 where the judges recommend it to the notice of the council. 

 It was in 1856, at the show of the Royal Dublin Society, 

 where I exhibited our heifer Florence (dam of Foundation, aud 

 her he calf of the year), against Mr. Campion's well-known 

 Jenny. The case was so marked, (the one animal in all the bloom 

 and vigour of full breeding condition, the other looking anything 

 but a breeder), that the judges at once turned to Dr. Colins, 

 who was steward on that occasion, and said, " This case, we 

 think, deserves to be brought under the notice of the council ; 

 here we have a very first-class pair of heifers, one with all the 

 unmistakable evidence about her of a breeder, the other, to 

 say the least, a doubtful-looking case, and consequently having 

 a much better furnished carcase of flesh." Dr. Colins only 



