395 A FARMER'S YEAR 



peopled towns, but to the Antipodes, has its advantages, and if I 

 were young again I would practice what I preach. 



When I had satisfied myself with a vision of fat beasts, I went 

 on to the Chrysanthemum Show at St. Andrew's Hall. I suppose 

 that it is my bad taste, but although I am a great lover of flowers, 

 and grow them to the best of my ability, I cannot say that I am 

 attracted by prize chrysanthemums. They seem like our society — 

 too highly cultivated, too much developed from the primitive 

 type, and, with all their infinite variety, to me they still suggest a 

 curious sense of sameness. 



As one may as well do a thing thoroughly while about it, 

 after the chrysanthemums I marched to the Poultry Show. It 

 was my first visit to one of these exhibitions, and, unless for some 

 very special purpose, I incline to the opinion that it will be my 

 last. Here the odours are very pungent, while the noise is absolutely 

 deafening, for every cock in the place is fiercely set upon crowing 

 down about three hundred and fifty other cocks. One of these birds 

 showed extraordinary intelligence. There he stood in his box 

 with his head laid sideways on its floor. I thought that he must 

 be very sick, and watched him ; but presently he lifted himself up 

 and crowed most furiously. Clearly the creature was like the deaf 

 adder that stoppeth her ears, only he stopped his ears to make him- 

 self deaf, being, like myself, overpowered by the execrable noise. 



I never knew before that cocks grew to such a size — indeed, 

 some of the birds at the Norwic»?i show reminded me of young 

 ostriches, fowls wuth which I am acquainted, for I have farmed 

 them. Once, with a friend, I rode to a distant stead in the Trans- 

 vaal, where we invested our little all — or most of it — in ostriches, 

 of which a shrewd and progressive Boer wished to be lid. There 

 were six or eight of them, and they cost about three hundred 

 pounds, for at that time the ostrich market was tight — in the 

 Transvaal. For the same sum, or a little more, I have no doubt 

 that in those days of cheap land we might have bought the 

 whole farm. Had we done so, I suppose, if a plethora of wealth 

 had left me still alive, that instead of writing books in the country 



