678 Report on the Exhibition of Live-Stock at Shrewsbury, 1884. 
strain, so famed as prize-winners in years gone by, under the colours of 
tlae late Mr. Thomas Crisp, Mr. Mumford Sexton, and Mr. Stearn.* 
Of the prizes awarded, the Duke of Hamilton takes all four firsts offered, 
Mr. J. A. Smith three seconds, and Mr. Northey one. In the Keport we are 
requested to make on the pigs brought before us, there is little to dwell on as 
regards individual entries. The best in the Boar Classes we took to be the 
young one from Easton Park, No. 1572, but his hair was scant and short, 
and we think the Duke has shown better animals elsewhere. The Old Boars 
were an unsatisfactory class to judge ; so unlike each other, so varied in cha- 
racter, so different in their merits and defects, that we had great difficulty in 
arriving at a conclusion as to their proper places on the prize-list. We 
decided, however, that the depth of carcass, heavy hams, and good hair of 
the Duke of Hamilton's " Young Robert " gave him an advantage over 
Mr. Smith's thin-faced, short-ribbed, but grand-backed "Akenham Hero," 
No. 1564, to which we awarded the second prize. The reserved number fell 
to the Duke's " Young Sam," a pig with a model fore-end but a wretched 
back, and otherwise not a Show boar. 
The Sows were better; the winner a very good one indeed, from the same 
sire as the Duke's first-prize boar, but withal of a higher-class stamp. 
Mr. Northey's second-prize sow is a heavy-fieshed, short-legged animal, with 
a good face, but of a soft, fatty handling, which betokens a very little lean 
meat, and was sent before the Judges, contrary to law as we were informed, 
with a decided appearance of artificial colouring. 
The three young sows of the Duke of Hamilton's pen No. 1579, were well- 
grown specimens of the breed, every advantage having been taken of the 
early farrow, the Catalogue states. They were sired by the reserve-number 
boar, but showed a decided improvement on his form and build. 
On the whole, we thought there was a want of uniformity of character, 
* The present race of " Small Blacks " have their home very much in East 
Anglia. They are more or less, as stated above, the descendants of the pigs 
with which the late Mi. Thomas Crisp, of Bulley Abbey, Mr. Sexton, of TVherst^ad, 
near Ipswich, and Mr. Stearn, of Brandeston, all in iSuifolk, won with all over 
the kingdom twenty-four or thirty years back. These were improvements on 
what Sir Thomas Western and the late Mr. Fisher Hobbs worked up out of the 
original Essex breed crossed with the Neapolitan pig. One of the most success- 
ful introductions of a fresh strain was from Devonshire, in all probability from 
one of the same family whoso name appears in the same Keport. A boar, known 
in the county of Suffolk as "Northey," had a lasting influence on the breed. He 
was used by Mr. Wolton, of Kesgrave (a celebrated breeder of Suffolk horses, 
since removed to Butley Abbey), with the greatest success, and, I believe, 
Mr. Ci'isp had him for some time after Mr. AVolton had done with him. In 1855, 
Mr. Crisp sent one of his best sows (a descendant, I believe, of the " Northey " 
boar) to the Paris Exhibition. The Judges condemned her as too fat to breed, 
and withheld the prize. On her voyage back she gave birth to eleven good pigs, 
and brought them all up. The litter made what at that time were called fabu- 
lous prices. One realised 50 guineas, and the best blood in East Anglia goes 
back to this famous litter of pigs. The sow was called •' Black Diamond," a 
name by which the Siimll Black Breed of East Anglia is well known at the pre- 
sent time. Jlr. Crisp died about 18G9, and the pigs were sold off. Mr. Steam, 
who was one of the most successful breeders of the " Black Diamonds,'' has ceased 
to show; and Mr. G. M. Sexton sold off his pigs by auction three or four years 
ago. He did more to spread the fame of the Blacks than even Mr. Stearn or 
Mr. Crisp. Mr. J. A. Smith, one of the most successful breeders of the present 
day, bought largely of the Wherstead strain, and though the agent of the Duko 
of Hamilton has brought the Eiisttm Park pigs to the front a good many times in 
the last few years, one and all derived their original stock from the '' Black 
Diamond-Northey " strain alluded to above, — H. B. 
