CATTLE AND HORSES. 1G5 



the older stock of the country, which is originally of 

 mixed English and Dutch of various kinds. The cows 

 exhibited were nearly all Devons, and there was a 

 beautiful Devon bull in the yard which had been bred in 

 Canada. In the Western and South-Western States 

 the short-horn blood predominates, and of this blood 

 there were some good specimens exhibited. 



The Merino sheep are great favourites, and in the 

 Rembouiilet stock the carcass has been much improved. 

 If they have dry lying, they stand the winter well in 

 open sheds. 



Of horses there was a large show. Of that fast- trot- 

 ting horse which is so much fancied in this country there 

 were many exhibited. It is in the exigencies of a new 

 country, where few horses could be kept by the small 

 farmers, and the necessity for having them of a kind 

 which could both work in the field and go fast to market, 

 that we find the origin of that general lightness of body 

 which distinguishes the Canadian and other North Ame- 

 rican horses. They are, in reality, too light for heavy 

 farm-work ; and when the period arrives for deep- 

 ploughing, and more extensive cultivation of heavy land, 

 a heavier and stronger stock of horses, still preserving a 

 quick step, will gradually take the place both of the 

 oxen, which, in many of the States, are now extensively 

 employed, and of the limber-horses, with which they are 

 sometimes yoked in the same team. 



On the whole, the opinion I formed of the actual con- 

 dition of New York agriculture, from the show of imple- 

 ments and stock on this occasion, was a very favourable 

 one. That the practical agriculture of the State is far 

 behind that of the best parts of England and Scotland 

 no one can deny ; but that there are good farmers in the 

 State, that progress is making generally, that a desire 

 for progress is very widely diffusing itself, and that there 

 are men of skill and energy at work in exciting and 



