198 BOARD OF xVGRICULTURE. 



therefore, that they had premiums offered in separate classes. 

 Both the English cattle and the English sheep show more 

 careful attention to breeding. Still as dairy stock they made an 

 exceedingly creditable show of themselves, and attracted about 

 them a crowd of admiring spectators. 



The little Bretonne cows pleased me exceedingly. Standing 

 only about three feet high on their legs — the most fasliionable 

 height — most, black and wliite, now and then but rarely, a red 

 and white, they are docile as kittens, and look pretty enough to 

 become the kitchen pet of the liard pressed mountain or hillside 

 farmer, with pastures too short and scanty for a grosser animal. 

 Ten pounds of hay will suffice for their limited wants for 

 twenty-four hours, and they would evidently fill a seven-quart 

 pail as quick and long as any other cow. In fact the Bretons 

 took my fancy, and had it been practicable I should have liked 

 nothing better tlian to have taken them along, as one would 

 take a favorite dog. The cost of keep could hardly have been 

 greater. 



These pretty Bretons will often hold out in milk, so the 

 herdsmen said, from fifteen to eighteen months after calving, 

 a)id often begin after the first calf with six or seven quarts a 

 day. Tlie horn is fine, not unlike the Jersey's, but smaller, 

 and tapering off gradually, and the escutcheon, or milk marks 

 of Guenon, generally very good. Good cows are held at from 

 sixty to seventy dollars a head, a fancy price of course, but I 

 am not sure that they would not pay six per cent, on the invest- 

 ment as well as most " fancy stocks." 



The horses at this great sliow were very different from those 

 which would be expected at a similar show in New England. 

 In some respects we could liavc far surpassed the exhibition at 

 Battersea Park, grand as it was. Perhaps not, however, in the 

 eyes of an Englishman. 



The most striking, and to me the most interesting feature in 

 the horse yard was the grand array of Suffolks. Those entered 

 as agricultural horses not qualified to comjjcte as Sulfolks, and 

 the Clydesdales were scarcely less remarkable. One of the 

 most judicious reporters, in speaking of the show of horses at 

 this exhibition, admits tliat " the short-comings of particular 

 parts were immensely outweighed by the completeness and 

 perfection of the whole," and tliat "the grand array of agricul- 



