SEVENTEENTH ANNUAL YEAR BOOK— PART VIII 475 



Wm. Crownover won the mare championship with a big, blooming 

 chestnut daughter of Farceur. This filly that bested the best of the 

 country in the female events is a two-year-old. The weights have to be 

 stacked up to the extent of 1,990 pounds before the scale beam tips to 

 her majestic proportions. She is an extraordinary young mare, one 

 of Mr. Crownover's own breeding and furnishes ample proof that Iowa 

 can lead the world in the production of Belgian draft animals. 



The Iowa College of Agriculture was very much in evidence all along 

 the line at the International, and, as usual, succeeded in capturing a lib- 

 eral portion of the choice ribbons and trophies. Some sixty or more 

 head of well-finished animals, horses, cattle, swine and sheep, took part 

 in the contests and earned glory for the institution where bred, fed 

 and finished. But the best part of the Ames exhibit, a truly live one, was 

 the college students who "went in" two hundred strong to enjoy the do- 

 ings and root for the institution of their choice. And the reader may 

 rest assured that no opportunity for rooting was allowed to pass un- 

 grasped. The judging team captured second honors in a contest in which 

 teams from fifteen agricultural colleges took part, representing fourteen 

 of Uncle Sam's states and the province of Ontario. The Iowa team made 

 a score of 3,950, the Hoosier boys from Purdue University winning 

 first place by only twenty points, not enough to crow over, but sufficient 

 to annex the $1,000 trophy offered by the Stock Yards Company. In- 

 dividual honors went to J. M. Buoy, of the Iowa team, who scored a total 

 of 885 points out of a possible 1,000, winning thereby a gold medal as 

 a reward for efficiency. 



IOWA FAIRS OF 1916. 



FROM GREATER IOW^\. 



Like some huge motherly biddy the Iowa State Fair reposes majes- 

 tically in the geographical center of the state surrounded by a lively 

 brood of ninety-nine county and district fairs. Some of the brood, long 

 past the frying age, are hearty and husky in the extreme; some are 

 in the callow stage of pin feathers, while a few fresh from the shell 

 are facing the problem of existence and the chances for eluding the 

 snares and pitfalls of financial shortcomings. 



Last year was a distressing one for fairs in Iowa. The old hen got 

 pretty badly soaked, financially, and several members of the brood, not 

 being equipped with webbed feet and life preservers were, to all appear- 

 ances, drowned. But through some happy and mysterious means of 

 of resuscitation they appeared again with the brood nearly in 1916, and 

 from the way they were able to scratch and crow — especially the latter — 

 it was plain they were undiscouraged by their flood experiences. 



The present year, 1916, proved a good and prosperous one for the fairs 

 in Iowa. It more than made up for the delinquencies and disasters of 

 1915. At the close of the 1915 fair season a few pessimistic individuals 

 scattered about the state predicted what they were pleased to term the 

 "passing of the county fair." They declared dolefully and dolorously that 

 as an institution it had outlived its usefulness, and in their minds had it 



