WORCESTER COUNTY SOCIETY. 53 



Fat Cattle. 



The committee on fat cattle are fully sensible of the fact, 

 that theirs is a weighty matter ; and. to true descendants of the 

 beef-eating old Saxons, one of transcendent importance. "What 

 though the eloquent Patrick Henry ridiculed the man who 

 thought only of his best beef^ Avhile the people were rejoicing at 

 the birth of a nation, we doubt not, if the Virginian had lived 

 in this our day, and attended this our jubilee, even he would 

 have shouted with the loudest, beef ! beef ! and thought it no 

 abstraction. 



As beef is the complexion to which all cattle must come at 

 last, and, as this festival is preeminently a " cattle-show," the 

 committee feel that, to their inspection and adjudication has 

 been assigned the great feature, the crowning excellence of our 

 annual exhibition. But, though aware of the importance of 

 the subject, and however disposed to magnify their office, the 

 committee acknowledge they had no adequate conception of its 

 magnitude, until they saw the moving mountains of future sir- 

 loins and steaks, tender-loins and roasts, which have this day 

 graced the society's enclosures. 



Great as have been the improvement and advance in all the 

 departments of agriculture and stock-raising, since the estab- 

 lishment of this society, in none has that improvement been so 

 great as in that of fat cattle. By the records of the society, it 

 will appear that, at the first cattle-show, the heaviest and best 

 ox offered for premium, weighed 1,732 pounds. To-day an ox 

 is shown to the committee, weighing 2,780 pounds, and the 

 average weight of 15 others offered for premium is 2,240. 



Here is a fact at once encouraging and complimentary, flat- 

 tering to the society under whose auspices the improvement 

 has been made, and most honorable to the thrift and enterprise 

 of our intelligent and progressive yeomen. But though much 

 has been done, your committee believe much more may be done. 

 The limit which bounds the area of fatness has not yet been 

 reached ; the great problem, of how much beef one single ox- 

 hide may be made to contain, has not yet been solved. 



