REPORTS OF DELEGATES. 299 



attendance at the show, and also at the annual meeting for 

 choice of officers, by their spirited debates on the various sub- 

 jects brought before the meeting, but think they lacked a little 

 this year in feeling their individual responsibility to bring out 

 their best, so that the farmers' holiday should be one of the 

 greatest events of the year. This was undoubtedly owing to 

 the poor facilities for getting to the place of exhibition from 

 the eastern part of the county. 



Matthew Smith. 



MIDDLESEX. 



I received the appointment to attend the sixty-ninth exhibition 

 of the old Middlesex Society with much pleasure, both from its 

 historical associations and by having become interested in 

 agricultural societies from reading the reports of that society 

 some twelve years ago, which were presented to me by Hon. 

 Simon Brown ; but from the report of the delegate of last year, 

 I had some fear that this society had lost its youth and vigor 

 and declined into an inactive state of existence, but how was I 

 surprised to find it one of the most active societies that I have 

 ever visited, performing as much in one day as most others do 

 in two. 



First in order was the ploughing match, in which sixteen teams 

 were engaged. The land was a sandy loam, the sward not 

 quite as tough as I would wish, but as a whole the work was 

 well done. I should have been better pleased if some teams 

 had performed their parts at a more even gait, and one or two 

 competitors had to prepare their ploughs after starting. 



At the society's ground was the largest number of neat cattle 

 that I have seen at a county fair. Most of the milch cows and 

 young stock were thorough-bred ; the Devon by Mr. Buckmin- 

 ster ; Jerseys by Mr. Hurd ; the fine-looking Dutch stock by 

 Mr. W. W. Chenery, and the Ayrshires by Mr. Sheldon. There 

 were grades and crosses of nearly all the pure bloods and 

 natives, or what is so called, but it would be hard to provoi that 

 they were not tainted with some foreign blood. 



