NOVEMBER 395 



At Bedingham, to-day, I found that the beet have all been 

 lifted and haled. The men are carting flashings from the hedge- 

 rows into heaps for burning, as it is useless to keep them till 

 another year to serve as stack-bottoms, since by that time 

 they would have rotted. Moore is ploughing up the root land, 

 the two young horses, which have ' come in ' very satisfactorily, 

 working half a day apiece. This is as much as they ought to do 

 at present. 



November 18. To-day I went to Norwich to see the Agricul- 

 tural Show. I cannot pretend that an agricultural show held 

 under a roof is a particularly pleasant place to linger in ; there 

 are too many smells and too much noise. The red-poll classes 

 were strong, the fat steers being, some of them, magnificent 

 animals. As was to be expected, the executors of the lamented 

 Mr. Colman took a large proportion of the prizes. Out of their 

 great herds they are able to pick and choose ; moreover, in 

 such establishments the rearing of cattle for show is almost 

 a business. From birth till they appear upon the bench, every 

 delicacy which they can be persuaded to eat is crammed down 

 the throats of these pampered animals, together with liberal 

 draughts of new milk. Hood tells me that when he was in 

 the service of a gentleman in the Shires, they reared a short- 

 horn steer that took the first prizes at some of the largest shows 

 in England. In addition to all his other nutriment, this creature 

 was accustomed to swallow a bucket of new milk every day, 

 with admirable results upon his condition. Such treatment 

 means a large expenditure, with a very problematical return in 

 the way of advertisement ; indeed, as I believe I have written 

 elsewhere, I doubt whether it pays the small man to compete at 

 these great shows, however good may be his stock. 



At first sight to-day an observer in the Show might have 

 thought, as I did, that the condition of the various cattle exhausted 

 the possibilities of fat, until a visit to the pig department proved 

 him to be utterly mistaken. What monsters are these ! And how 



