The Agncultural Features of the Paris Exhihition. 175 
np to which the ages of the animals were reckoned — 1st May, 
1878. For this country, in which there is a pretty regular 
calving season — the spring months — the date of calculating ages 
could not have been more unsatisfactory. The two-year-olds 
had to compete among cows, and the class under two years on 
1st Mav had to be made up chiefly of what is usually termed 
yearlings. Then the maximum age for bulls was four years on 
1st Mav last. That still further limited British competition. 
There was no such limitation in the female classes, and we could 
see no reason for it in those for males. 
The system of judging bv large juries is also unpopular with 
British exhibitors of live stock, and is year by year getting 
more so. Again, there was little prospect that the body of 
jurors would include gentlemen familiar even with the main 
characteristics of the various British breeds. For example, we 
happen to know that but for this fear there would have been a 
good representation at Paris of the heavy-milking Ayrshire, the 
valuable grazing Polled Galloway, and the excellent beef- 
making Hereford. As it was, these breeds were almost, if not 
wholly, a blank. The grouping of various breeds rathei 
awkwardly together in the original premium-list had also a 
deterring effect — more, however, in the sheep than the cattle 
classes. Those splendid mutton-makers, the Shropshire Downs, 
for instance, were conspicuous bv their absence on this account ; 
so were those valuable crossing sheep, the Border Leicesters. 
The former were linked with the Oxford and the Hampshire 
Downs, and the latter with English Leicesters, Lincolns, and 
some other Long-wooUed breeds. Anvthing like satisfaction could 
not have resulted from so many different breeds competing 
together. Breeders were fully aware of this, and many who 
would otherwise have sent their stock kept them at home. That 
the jurors would succeed in getting prizes for the representatives 
of each of the distinct breeds could not have been foreseen months 
before by stock-owners, who, of course, had only the official 
premium-list to guide them. 
While these circumstances unquestionably made the display 
of British live stock less representative, smaller, and generally 
not so creditable as it otherwise would have been, it cannot be 
said that this country has cause to complain, or to be ashamed of 
the result. England carried the " blue ribbon" of the Exhibition 
for sheep and swine, and Scotland that for cattle. For horses 
the champion prize was considered by British visitors to be 
more decidedly theirs than the cattle, sheep, or pig trophies 
were ; but a different system of adjudication was adopted in the 
equine department, as will be afterwards explained, and the 
c<»veted honour was retained in France. 
