editors’ address. 
51 
twice, Tom Thumbs or American horses. But it is not taking 
legitimate views of these fat prodigies to say they were made so 
fat for the single purpose of exhibition, much less for the mercan- 
tile one of being sold at a price for food or candles. The object of 
exhibition clearly is, to prove that an animal of such a breed is by 
such and such food and treatment capable of being brought to the 
exhibited state of perfection as regards fatness. To what this leads, 
or what practical deductions are to be drawn from it, is another 
question. Should the same breed of animal which has proved ca- 
pable of being made, at so much cost and care, over- fat by the aris- 
tocratic exhibitor turn out to be such an one as would not repay 
the less wealthy stock-owner or the poor man for his feeding, we 
should say, so far as that experiment went, that it was a failure or 
not worth the making. What the cottager wants is a pig that 
will live on nothing and get fat on any thing. Nor is the farmer 
or feeder satisfied unless his stall-fed ox turn out such, either in 
quantity or quality, or both, as will amply repay him for first cost 
and for feeding. For these reasons, for our own part, we should 
like to see — what The Times has suggested — a debtor and creditor 
account tacked to every fatted beast ; the merit being not so much 
in the quantity of fat or of flesh, as in the comparative cost at which 
such fat or flesh has been produced. 
Breed and SYMMETRY, in animals raised for food, can have in 
the end no other useful tendency but this ; and as symmetry is 
nothing more than the perfection of breed, the two considerations 
merge into one. Breeds form themselves under the influence 
of countries, soil, pasture, climate, &c., and are improved by culti- 
vation ; and it is a great point to gain to suit the breed to the 
locality or country. Herefordshire oxen would be as much out of 
their place on the Welsh mountains as Welsh kine in the rich 
pastures of Herefordshire. So a cow or a pig may be very good 
property for a rich man, and yet very unprofitable to a poor man. 
These are matters which the Cattle Show might endeavour to set 
forth. 
The grand error our cattle exhibitors appear to have fallen into, 
if we might be allowed to express an opinion on the matter, seems 
to us to be, that, vying with one another, they have, regardless of 
expense, been trying who of them could load the animal’s body 
