618 Report on the Exhibition of Live-Stock at Shrewsbury, 1884. 
tural stallions. Most of these associations have been working 
three or four years, and a marked improvement in the young 
stock of the district is the result.* An opportunity of studying 
the best types of draught horses was therefore specially desirable 
at this period, and such an opportunity the Show at Shrews- 
bury, a good, if not in any way a remarkably grand Show, 
abundantly afforded. 
The different classes of Shire Stallions contained altogether 
53 entries; those of Mares and Foals, 7 ; and of Fillies, 26 ; making 
86 entries of Shire Horses exclusively : Agricultural Stallions 
not qualified to compete in the Shire Classes numbered 17 ; 
Mares and Foals, 5 ; and Fillies, 3 entries : and four classes were 
open to Shire and Agricultural alike, the condition being that 
the animals entered were not qualified to compete in the 
Clydesdale or Suffolk Classes. In these four classes were 
9 entries of fillies and 22 of colts, 3 of pairs, mares or geldings, 
and 10 of single geldings, making a total of 155 entries in the 
Shire and Agricultural Classes. 
The first Class of Stallions, 12 entries, three absent, comprised 
the winner of first honours at Reading and York, with the 
championship at the latter Show, and the horses also which 
respectively had the second prize and the reserved number 
at York. The York second was here first, the Earl of EUes- 
mere's bright bay " Esquire," who was accounted not only best 
in his class, but second-best of all in the three Classes of 
Stallions, and had the reserved number for the Champion Prize, 
won by the same exhibitor's two-year-old stallion, so that the 
Worsley stud doubly secured the honour ; and if " Esquire," with 
his high bloom of condition and grand substance, had been as 
good in his fore-legs as elsewhere, he might have defeated his 
younger rival in the contest for the Shire Horse Society's prize. 
Some critics thought he ought to have taken it. Scarcely. 
The Judges, surely, were right ! Mr. Crawshaw's iron-grey 
" Cheadle Jumbo," a well-known winner, came second ; if he 
have not quite the high polish of " Esquire," he has, neverthe- 
less, immense substance and power. The Cannock Company's 
" Earl of Chester " made a fairly good third ; and Mr. Shep- 
herd's brown, inclining to bay, " Commodore," a short-backed 
horse (from the great arch over shoulder and neck rising so far 
back), with a profusion of mane and leg "feather," had the 
reserved number. 
* A veterinary authority, well acquainted with the powerful railway-horses 
and the dray and van-horscs in the brewing and other industries of the Midland 
Counties, recently informed me that liorscs bred in Shropshire and Montgomery- 
shire improve and grow with work wlien put on good hard keep ; wliilst those 
bred in the Fen Counties lose flesh when put to work, and require a long time 
before they become "seasoned." — W. II. 
