Report on the Exldhition of Livc-Stoch at Taunton. 599 
That there should have been a great falling off in horses was 
not surprising, for Somersetshire and the south-western counties 
are not and never have been famous for their horse-breeding ; 
but it might have been expected that the Devons and the Here- 
fords would muster in great force, and that the Somerset and 
Dorset Horns, the Dartmoors and the Exmoors would have 
helped to make the show of sheep a particularly large one. It 
would seem, however, that, with the altered conditions of travel, 
Tve must no longer expect to see local breeds of cattle, sheep, or 
' pigs showing the boldest front in their own districts, and it 
1 Tvould probably be no exaggeration to say that as good Devons 
are bred in the Midlands as west of Bristol, though it did 
happen that at Taunton nearly all the prizes in the Devon 
classes were won by West Countrymen. We no longer look to 
I Sussex alone, or even chiefly, for the flower of the Southdowns, 
and not one of the four first prizes for Berkshire pigs offered 
at Taunton went into the county from which this breed takes 
its name. With horses the case is very different. Whether 
because the owner of a horse which has anything approaching 
to good looks about it likes to enter it at the Society's Show, or 
from some other reason, there is always a strong proportion of 
horses belonging to residents in the district ; and it follows, 
therefore, that when the Show is held in a great horse-breeding 
district, such as that within which Bedford is situated, there is 
invariably a strong muster of horses. The contrary is the case 
when the Society comes into the West, where there are probably 
fewer horses, certainly fewer good horses, than in any other part 
of the kingdom. At Taunton, scarcely a fifth of the 235 horses 
entered were the property of persons residing in Somersetshire ; 
or, as I may sav, taking here and giving there, less than fifty of 
the whole number exhibited were bred in the county. And 
even they failed to take their due proportion of prizes, for they 
carried off but ten out of the eighty-seven offered for compe- 
tition : four firsts, four seconds, and two thirds. Moreover, the 
expense of transit from more distant parts of the country in 
which horse-breeding occupies a considerable place in the agri- 
i culture of the district must have served to keep the numbers 
! down, for the railway companies do not make any reduction of 
[ their ordinary fares to the Show, and but little for the return 
journey. 
Horses. 
It would scarcely be too much to say that in Somersetshire 
the thoroughbred is almost as unknown as the Dodo ; and this 
being the case, it is not surprising to find that the breed of 
