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THE FARMER'S MAGAZINE. 



absolutely selected bulls that 'they must have known 

 had already been condemned as worthless and impotent. 

 Of course the punishment must ultimately i-ecoil on 

 the head of the offender. Some of our best breeds of 

 stock are getting a bad name. Rumour is busy de- 

 claring that animals purchased at long prices have been 

 shipped to Australia and America, where, to the cost of 

 the victimized, it was discovered they were utterly use- 

 The abuse of over-feeding had thoroughly incapacitated 

 them for any other purpose than feeding, and hence 

 the chief feature of our Show grounds is slowly but 

 surely working on to nil. The whole thing i3 artificial 

 and injurious, conducing only to an advertisement that 

 must be read with caution and distrust. 



It la but a few weeks since that Mr. Sotham, 

 writing from America, drew a very startling picture of 

 what this abuse has come to. In one sentence he says 

 "the forcing system has been nothing but deception 

 from beginning to end, and has led to all the other 

 evils connected with this kind of show." But Mr. 

 Sotham may have had prejudices in one way and 

 partialities in another — against the Shorthorn and 

 in favour of the Hereford. Indeed, it is in this 

 spirit that his letter is taken up by "A Member 

 of the Royal Agricultural Society." But the latter, 

 with some imprudence, centres his attack on Mr. Carr. 

 It is Mr. Carr Vv-ho has excited the wrath of the 

 "Member of the Royal Agricultural Society.'' And it 

 is this same Mr. Carr who, as our readers will 

 remember, has done more to remedy the evils and 

 actual dishonesty connected with the breeding and 

 selling of Shorthorn stock than any member or non- 

 member of the Royal Agricultural Society that we know 

 of. Curiously enough, Mr. Carr's offence is exactly the 

 reverse of Mr.Sotham's, who has a partiality for Here- 

 fords, while Mr. Carr is "puffing his own honesty 

 as a Shorthorn breeder.'' 



But when the " Member of the Royal Agricultural 

 Society" was writing down this charge, he must 

 have surely overlooked an article headed " The 

 Overfeeding of Shorthorns,'' and declared to be by 

 Mr. Fawkes, of Farnley; while it runs on in this 

 tone : — " You have at all your shows, and in the com- 

 mendations and premiums t!iat you have bestowed, 

 encouraged, nay, insisted on, as a requisite to success- 

 ful exhibition, a condition of the animal which all 

 experience and all authority on the subject tells us will 

 be prejudicial alike to its powers of calf-bearing and 

 milking, will prevent all usefulness in the cow, and is 

 preparing the heifer for no other power of profit to its 

 owner than the prematurity of its prize beef, and the 

 posthumous, but very questionable— so far as its pos- 

 sessor's advantage is concerned— honours of the sham- 

 bles. * * * "My own experience, as well as that 

 of all the practical men of the past, as well as of the 

 present age, to which I have had access, assures me 

 that the indi.sputably unnatural show-condition of the 

 animal, as you teach us to. consider it, is anything but 

 that state of its being which, whether in the heifer or 

 tlie cow, can benefit the public, or permit its owner the 

 profitable exercise of his calling and his capital." * 



* * " The best and most useful cows of every herd 

 must be — as long as you adhere to the system of 

 making a gaudy condition of tlie animal a sine qua 

 non, as now, to its success — of necessity left at home, 

 from their inability to have been, previously to the 

 show, performing two irreconcilable processes at once, 

 of putting on your condition, and doing their duty 

 with profit to their owners." Considering there 

 could have been no possible collision between 

 the two — remembering that they are assumed by 

 many to write with veiy different objects in 

 view, it is curious to see how strongly Mr. 

 Sotham and Mr. Fawkes go to confirm each 

 other's statements. What is there that Mr. So- 

 tham advances which Mr. Fawkes does not support? 

 Does not cither maintain that the present system of 

 overfeeding Shorthorn stock is tending to nothing but 

 fitting prize beasts for " the posthumous but question- 

 able honours of the shambles ?" And does not Mr. 

 Fawkes proceed to demonstrate that, whether better or 

 worse, you must, under such circumstances, have two 

 sets of animals — one to show, and the other to breed 

 from ? If the Member of the Royal Agricultural So- 

 ciety quarrels with Mr. Sotham or Mr. Carr, he is cer- 

 tainly quite as much at variance with Mr. Fawkes. And 

 who is Mr. Fawkes ? Himself a breeder and successful 

 exhibitor of Shorthorns, who we shall most likely hear 

 is " puffing his own honesty," because he has written a 

 straightforward and telling letter, in his own name, 

 against the perpetuation of an abuse that is surely 

 damaging our national credit with the world, whatever 

 a few short-sighted people may profit by it. . 



Let us echo Mr. Fawkes a little further in an exhor- 

 tation so thoroughly in accordance Vr-ith our own views, 

 and that, in its substance, v,'e have so often offered : — 

 " You will scarcely, I should think, hazard (were you 

 adventurous enough) to attempt a defence of these pro- 

 ceedings, involving that intelligent class of farmers from 

 whom your judges are selected, in the contempt that 

 would devolve upon the argument, ' that to assure 

 yourselves of the propriety of their awards of your pre- 

 miums, form, frame, and quality are not enough, but 

 tlie fleshy condition of the animal presented to you can 

 be the only safe index to the futurity of fat either in it- 

 self or its progeny.' And here I may ask you to reflect 

 of what useful instruction to the young farmer you are 

 by the permission of this show condition depriving your- 

 selves ; for what can be more important for the young 

 farmer to know, what more advantageous to him, that 

 he should learn, by a process less costly than his own 

 unaided experience, how to select for purchase in the 

 lean fairs the animals that are most calculated to realize 

 his expectation on their re-sale iu the fat markets ?" 



Mr. Fawkes addresses his letter to the Council of his 

 own county Society. The meeting of the Yorkshire, 

 however, merges this year into that of the National 

 Sliow; and consequently, with permission, we would 

 re-direct his communication to the Council of the Royal 

 Agricultural Society of England. 



