HISTOEY OF HEEEFOED CATTLE 



353 



award even such a heifer as Mrs. Edwards' 

 'Leonora' the championship over the Shorthorn 

 'Diana' ; but it had to be done, and we thmk 

 there were few outsiders who were not thor- 

 ouglily satisfied. These cliampionship awards 

 were an unquestionable streak of lean for the 

 'fancy/ and we may depend upon their not al- 

 lowing such a thing to occur again if they can 

 possibly help it. This, after .the Hereford vic- 

 tories at Paris, is about as much as they will be 

 able to bear with patience. We should be glad 

 to see sweepstakes judging of this kind occur 

 more frequently." 



The honors will be shifted from the Here- 

 fords to the Shorthorns, and from the Short- 

 horns to the Herefords, and again the Polled- 

 Angus may win over both, so long as the judg- 

 ing is upon the animal without regard to cost ; 

 but when their merits are measured by the "cost 

 of producing and value of product," there will 

 be but one result, and that will always be in 

 favor of Herefords. 



J\tr. Matthews understood very well that the 

 Shorthorns, as a breed, had been bred to 

 "Duke" bulls until in the language of the "Na- 

 tional Live Stock Journal,'" thev were a 

 ''coughing, wheezing, consumptive lot" ; and 

 in the language of, Thornton's circular, "weedy 

 offspring, delicate in constitution, and ill- 

 adapted for crossing purposes." 



Mr. Matthews' statement as to conditions in 

 England were, however, taken up by the "Mark 

 Lane Express" itself, which denied emphati- 

 cally Mr. M.'s assertion and said decidedly that 

 the Shorthorn breed had not yet driven the 

 Hereford breed off one acre of ground. In its 

 issue for July 4, 1881, it said: "There is a 

 lively controversy respecting the comparative 

 merits of Shorthorns and Herefords going on 

 in the columns of the 'National Live Stock 

 Journal' (Chicago), between Mr. A. S. Mat- 

 thews, of Wytheville, Ta., and Mr. T. L. Miller, 

 of Beecher, 111., and they both quote the 'Mark 

 Lane Express' as supporting them in their re- 

 spective arguments. In this controversy we 

 have no wish to enter; we shall enjoy seeing 

 them fight it out. Neither of these gentlemen 

 requires any assistance from us, but thev each 

 of them call for a remark or two from us in re- 

 spect to some of their statements. 



"To begin with Mr. Matthews, as his letter 

 comes first in the 'Journal' and is replied to in 

 the same number by Mr. Miller : In referring 

 to our report of the last Islington Fat Stock 

 Show, Mr. Matthews quotes what was there said 

 of Mr. G'rissel's mixed-bred steer, 'by a Short- 

 horn bull out of a non-pedigree cow,' namely, 

 that he was precisely the sort of animal with 



which the British farmer must hope lo win m 

 that struggle with foreign competition, an ani- 

 mal which can be grown by a system of mixed 

 husbandry, which has the production of meat 

 and milk on arable land for its basis." Now, 

 if this is precisely the sort of animal that the 

 breeders and graziers on all arable farms of 

 mixed husbandry m the United States must 

 grow if they expect to send beef, live or dead, to 

 England at a profit, and these arable farms of 

 mixed husbandry on which cattle can be bred, 

 grazed and fattened profitably, include all the 

 land east of the Eocky Mountains, and north 

 of what may probably be termed the 'Cotton 

 Belt,' in reply to this we have no hesitation in 

 saying that where conditions of mixed hus- 

 bandry exist in the United States, equivalent to 

 those which constitute the essential features of 

 mixed husbandry in England, the Shorthorn 

 breed of cattle should, according to our ideas 

 of the subject, be equally suitable and ser- 

 viceable there as here. But we were under the 



JNO, G. IMBODEN, DECATUR, ILL. 

 Celebrated expert judge. 



impression that east of the Eocky Mountains . 

 and north of the Cotton Belt there existed in ' 

 the LTnited States vast plains of grazing lands 

 on which large herds of cattle are bred, reared 

 and fattened, and it has been in reference to 

 these supposed localities that we have ventured 

 to express the opinion, that Herefords would do 

 better than Shorthorns. If 'all the land east of 



