374 Report on the Exhibition of Live Stock at Cardrff'. 
might have been assumed to depend mainly on their own breeds 
of stock, and so to have given an occasional idiosyncrasy to the 
scene. At Cardiff, so general has been the advance of improve- 
ment, the home-breeders made more mark with their Herefords, 
Shorthorns, and Cotswolds than anything else; and at Gloucester 
they made no mark whatever. Mr. Richard Milward, the senior 
steward of that meeting, says in his Report, " the Welsh breed 
was a complete failure : lOl. was offered by the Society, for 
which only five animals were shown, and these were not worth 
the amount of the prizes." Of these five, three were brown and 
white, and two black animals. The brown and white were of 
course the old Glamorgans, of which I could gather little more 
at Cardiff than that they had fairly died out. Although good 
beef, they ripened slowly, and, after vain attempts at crossing, 
have been out-paced by more modern breeds on their way to 
market. The black Castle-Martins hold their ground more 
firmly, but 1 remember a better show of the sort a few year* 
back at Carmarthen, as there no doubt will be again in Sep- 
tember, when some champion prizes will be offered. In fact, 
the breed was done scant justice to here by the exhibitors ; and 
when, during last autumn. Sir Watkin Wynn recommended his 
friends in Cheshire " to go to Cardiff next summer and see for 
themselves whether the black cattle of South Wales were equal 
to the black cattle of North Wales," the President, no doubt, 
expected there would be a far stronger display of native produce. 
It is n,oticeable, however, tliat, much as they may be coveted by 
the grazier or sought by the butcher, neither the North nor South 
Wales cattle ever offer much front as show stock. There may 
be a runt or two entered at Bingley Hall or at Islington, but the 
competition rarely extends beyond the number of premiums. 
The main features, then, of our great national expositions in 
this way are becoming more and more alike. There will be 
Shorthorns shown this autumn at Hereford fair ; and at Exeter 
last spring, on the opening day of a new Devonshire Society, 
the Shorthorns beat the Dev^ons for the champion prize^. When 
another great meeting is called for the Midlands, there will 
probably be as many Longhorns sent from Leicestershire and 
Warwickshire as were sent to Cardiff — some three or four in 
all. Reporting on Gloucester in 1853, Mr. Milward said, 
" We may now hope that after repeated trials with the best 
intentions to draw out the cattle peculiar to a district, the Society 
will cease to offer prizes for any but the three recognized breeds 
of cattle." Anil certainly at Cardiff " the cattle peculiar to the 
<listrict" would by the event appear to be cattle whose pecu- 
liarity is that they are known all over the world — such as Short- 
horns and Herefords : whereas the Castle-Martins, the Angleseys, 
the Montgomeryshires, the Red Polls, and tlie Ayrshires, were. 
