THE BOOK OF POULTRY. 



serious sense of obligation and duty. Both 

 expectations have been realised, and have 

 gradually worked a revolution in this depart- 

 ment of poultry exhibition. 



Though the gain has been great upon the 

 whole, however, it would be a mistake to sup- 

 pose it an unmi.xed gain. It is all gain to have 



an adequate number of judges — 

 Evils 01 the forty, acting singly, were employed 

 Modem at a recent Crystal Palace Show — 



System. ^vho can therefore take adequate 



time. It is great pain to know that 

 any considerable miscarriage in the awards is 

 pretty sure to be detected by the skilled 

 reporters of the poultry press. But the very 

 number of arbitrators now required, and the 

 necessity imposed by fiercer competition that 

 many varieties should be judged by those who 

 possess a breeder's knowledge of them, and the 

 far greater number of shows, have introduced 

 some evils of their own. A large portion of 

 the judges are necessarily now drawn from 

 the ranks of exhibitors themselves, and this has 

 had a perceptible tendency towards the creation 

 of certain circles, or " swims " as they might be 

 called, whose members work in with one another, 

 and reciprocate favours. We have seen too 

 evident signs of this, especially in certain Mid- 

 land and Northern districts of England ; and 

 there are one or two judges to-day, of un- 

 doubted ability, who have never gained a good 

 reputation. As regards the larger shows, grave 

 miscarriages are kept in check by the press, 

 whose vigilance holds minor matters also 

 under control ; but such vigilance has certainly 

 been required, and cases of muti:al favour do 

 undoubtedly occur. The old school of judges 

 were most certainly not above showing personal 

 resentment, as we too often had occasion to 

 know,* but they were mostly far above mutual 



* After we had personally ceased to compete at shows, as 

 stated in a previous note, one of the most valued members of 

 our staff was compelled on one occasion to take serious objec- 

 tion loan award, the judge having himself sold the birds to the 

 exhibitor, which occasionally happened even in those days. He 

 consulted us over the pen, and we have not the slightest hesita- 

 tion in saying that his strictures were both perfectly legitimate 

 and imperatively called for, while he was not himself exhibiting 

 at all on that occasion. For a year afterwards that reporter was 

 treated unmercifully as we had been, though confessedly the 

 most eminent breeder of the day ; and the judge concerned 

 carried his almost constant colleague with him in the same 

 course. After about a year of it, the reporter at last went up 

 boldly to the judge and said, ' Mr. * *, don't you think you 



have about taken it out of me for that report of mine?" 



The judge laughed, simply replied "Nonsense," and turned 

 away. But the appeal was successful, and the next show at 

 which he appeared found our reporting friend once more in his 

 accustomed place, somewhere near the top of the tree. This 

 judge was a very large seller of the stock he judged — as bad a 

 case as any now, though such was then decidedly the exception. 

 Both parties are long since dead, and this statement can now 

 barm no cue. 



" understandings," doing their work chiefly for 

 the love of it, or for the prominence it gave 

 them. There has also been evident of late a 

 kind of competition for public favour amongst 

 some who act as judges, not altogether pleasant 

 to a disinterested onlooksr ; evident attempts to 

 pose a? possessors of superior knowledge, or of 

 greater honesty of purpose and zeal for purity, 

 at the expense of others whose uprightness and 

 capacity are quite as great. It is well to open 

 one's eyes to all these things, and amongst new 

 conditions to seek for the highest ideals of the 

 older school, so far as those were good. But 

 upon the whole modern poultry judging, carried 

 out as it is by an adequate staff of practical men, 

 under the vigilant eyes of a whole staff of 

 skilled critics, is better and more consistent 

 than the old, and any clear miscarriage is sure 

 to be canvassed in the poultry press, which in 

 the long run ensures that justice is done. 



This naturally leads to a few words upon 

 press criticism, or show reporting, which needs 

 quite as much care to keep it up to a high 

 standard as judging itself The 

 Press Criticism question of anonymous or signed 

 or reports has been much discussed 



Reporting. ^^ times, but it is hardly worth 



discussing. A journal of repute, 

 with adequate means behind it, makes itself 

 responsible for its unsigned reports ; and when 

 the character of its conductors is known, that of 

 itself is the best guarantee. On the other hand, 

 sometimes it is an advantage if the criticisms on 

 some important breed at an important show are 

 signed by a name of well-known weight, pos- 

 sibly greater than that of the judge; and there can 

 be no possible objection to it whenever thought 

 advisable. On the whole, we think that anony- 

 mous criticism under editorial responsibility is 

 the best general rule ; and this opinion is the 

 result of many years' experience. But the 

 system cannot be divorced from editorial respon- 

 sibility; and although the painful necessity only 

 occurred to us upon two or three occasions in 

 si.x years, there should not be any hesitation in 

 acknowledgment and frank repudiation, when- 

 ever any abuse of a reporter's position has been 

 fairly proved. 



In the early days of critical reports the 

 judges often (especially at show dinners) used to 

 scoff bitterly at the presumption of careless 

 critics who, as they said, in a " skurry through 

 the classes " assumed to " set right in an hour 

 what had taken the judges the whole day." 

 There was here both a misrepresentation and a 

 misconception. Being present when the above 

 words were used at Birmingham, we had the 

 curiosity to make examination at the hands of 



