THE RURAL NEW-YORKER. 
to secure fine hay. If sown thin it grows too 
large with stalks too woody. Last summer he 
cut five tons of good hay per acre from Alfalfa. 
All kinds of stock are fond of it. He mowed 
it three times. It will produce one crop of seed 
and one of hay or three of hay ; or it will pas¬ 
ture twenty sheep per acre through the sum¬ 
mer. Three light plowings in August will kill 
it; or too mueh irrigation will have the same 
effect. For the last three seasons he has 
plowed some every spring, and it thrives well 
under the treatment, though he sowed spring 
wheat upon the ground. 
classes, the £50 Cup ($350), as the be6t heifer 
or cow in any of the classes (except 32), and a 
piocc of Plate valued at .£100 ($500), as the best 
beast in the Show. These prizes are given by the 
Smithfield Club, and besides she wins the Agri¬ 
cultural Hall Company’s prize of 100 guineas 
($535); and, as if this were not enough, our 
contemporary adds, “We understand that the 
enterprising firm of Cake (Linseed Oil) manu¬ 
facturers, Messrs. J. Gibbs & Co., are also per¬ 
mitted to add their 100-guinea decoration "— 
($525) more. This makes altogether 400 pounds 
The animals are, of course, required to be pure¬ 
bred in their classes,but the prizes arc awarded 
on account of perfection in fattening, and this 
is determined by quality rather than by quan¬ 
tity of flesh. 
I do not say that it is theoretically impossi¬ 
ble for such a Show, containing animals of 
equal merit, to be held in any other country, 
but it is practically impossible—at all events in 
the present, day, and in any other country than 
America. There are in no countries except 
yours and ours, an equal number of animals, 
It would be rash indeed to say that the Acme 
Tomato is destined to take the place of the 
Trophy. “We can hardly see how it could go 
ahead of the Trophy properly grown,” says the 
agricultural editor of the Weekly Tribune. If 
plants of each be grown side by side, these dif¬ 
ferences might, we think, be noted : The Acme 
is oarlier, of a rounder form, of a more uni¬ 
form size and ripens perfectly about the stem. 
The color is a purplish red- It iB of medium 
size and is easier to dress. The Trophy is 
larger, more lobed; of variable size, and does 
not generally ripen about the stem. It is a 
heavier cropper and the color is a bright red. 
Clydesdale Horses. —Acting under the au¬ 
thority of the Clydesdale Horse Society of 
Great Britain and Ireland, the Earl of Dun- 
more has compiled the first and retrospective 
volume of the stud-book of that breed. In it 
he rejects the popular theory that the Clydes¬ 
dale breed is the result of a cross between the 
native Seotch mares and some Flemish stallions 
imported by the Duke of Hamilton more than 
two centuries ago. He favors the opinion that 
the breed is a mixed one, the reward of careful 
attention in the selecting and mating of the 
best animals by the farmers in the valley of the 
Clyde. The work contains a short history of 
the Clydesdales; pedigrees of 1,044 horses 
foaled previous to Jan 1. 1875, aud an appendix 
containing particulars of stallions which could 
not be classed as Clydesdales but which are al¬ 
luded to in the numbered pedigrees. The data 
on which the history has been founded, have 
been corrected aud substantiated by personal 
investigation in Lanarkshire, the birth-place of 
the breed. Recently a lot of 15 Clydesdale 
female horses of various ages, were sold by 
one man at Glasgow Scotland at the high av¬ 
erage of $630, cash. The highest price paid was 
$1,250 ; while a famous prize-taking four-ycar- 
old mare was reserved at $2,500. There it 
seems good horses are thoroughly appre¬ 
ciated in the home market. 
ICICLE 
■FRONT VIEW 
sterling, or $2,000 won by this one animal at 
this Show—truly a wonderful record. This is 
the famous heifer referred to below in the letter 
of Professor I. P. Sheldon. 
having equal merit as fat animals, 6uch 
as we find at the Smithfield Show; and even 
if there were, it would be found practi¬ 
cally impossible to get together such an exhi¬ 
bition. We could not get together such an one 
in England, and we should nover feed the ani¬ 
mals up to such an extreme degree of fatness, 
were it not for the honor which centers in the 
winning of prizes there, and for the substantial 
inducements which the Smithfield Club offers. 
The Club is wealthy, and the Show is popular, 
and so the prizes can be offered year after year. 
Thq “ Blue Ribaud ” of the Smithfield Show is 
a coveted distinction, and our leading farmers 
are at great pains to win it. See what it 
amounts to in money: the champion beast in the 
Show is necessarily the beBt in his or her class 
and of his or her breed, as well as being the best 
among all the breeds. Now the champion prize 
is a piece of plate, value, 100 guineas; the 
prize for the best animal of.the breed is a cup, 
value £40; and the prizo for the best in the class 
is .£20 in cash. So it follows that the cham¬ 
pion beast secures to her owner three separate 
prizes, whose aggregate value is £165, or $825. 
This in itself is no meantriuinph,aBitis no bar¬ 
ren one. But the honor of producing the most 
nearly perfect fat beast in the Show is almost 
more highly valued than the money—is more 
highly valued in fact. 
Mr. Stratton, of Newport, Monmouthshire, 
is the enviable winner of the “ Blue Riband ” 
of the Smithfield in 1878; and he was congrat- 
THE SMITHFIELD SHOW. 
I. P. SHELDON, ROYAL AGRICULTURAL COLLEGE. 
CIRENCESTER, ENGLAND. 
I may, I thiRk, venture to presume that to 
most if not all the Rural agricultural readers, 
the term Smithfield Show needs not to be inter¬ 
preted. Nor will this assumption on my part 
be ascribed to national vanity, for, really, apart 
from all that sort of thing, the Smithfield 8how 
has a reputation which extends over the great¬ 
er part of the world. The Show is older than 
the present century, and it manifests all the 
vigor and freshness of perennial youth rather 
than the decrepitude of old age. 
The Smithfield Club is a society unique in 
character, and peculiar to England. Its ca¬ 
reer has been one of honor and usefulness, and 
it£ age lends a lustre to its doings. Only one 
of our prominent agricultural associations is 
older than the Smithfield, and that one is the 
Bath and West of England Society, which 
held its centennary last year. 
The Smithfield Club held its eighty-first an¬ 
nual Show of fat stock, in the Agricultural 
Hall, London, last week, and prizes of the ag¬ 
gregate value of about $14,000 were competed 
Remedy for Colic in a Colt.— The colt 
has been grazing on the winter oats for the 
past ten days, apparently doing finely, but last 
night she came home suffering from colic. We 
drenched her with half a coffee-cupful of soda 
in a pint of water, which gave relief in twenty 
minutes. This is not the first time we have 
used this remedy, always successfully. We were 
surprised that the colt should have colic after 
becoming accustomed to the green food. Our 
colored man says, “ the hard freezing of the 
last few nights made the green oats ‘colicy.” 
Perhaps he lias about the right idea with regard 
to the matter. To be safe, we shall let the 
cows and pigs enjoy the oats during the re¬ 
mainder of the winter. m. b. p 
THE BEST SHORT-HORN HEIFER IN THE 
WORLD. 
ICICLE 
for. It must be remembered that these prize* 
are offered, and this Show exists for fat stock 
only, and that breed, as such, is of no account 
whatever. There are, of course, classes for the 
different breeds of cattle, sheep, and pigs ; but 
in these, excellence of breed, purity of type, or 
any of the other characteristics for which each 
breed is respectively famous, is of no account. 
ulated first of all by the Prince of Wales, who 
witnessed the judging for the champion prize. 
The animal whose transcendent merits secured 
to her owner this coveted distinction, was a 
superbly beautiful red-roan Short-horn heifer. 
She is not very big either in stature or in ac¬ 
tual weight; but 6he is one of the most nearly 
perfect fat animals I have ever seen. She is a 
miUtum in paroo ; her top is wonderfully broad 
and long; she is very short on the leg, mar¬ 
velously wide and deep in the breast, and very 
deep and spacious in the hind-quarters; her 
bone is fine and small, and the proportion of 
offal is very small compared with that of meat. 
She is splendidly fed, and handles firm and full 
of quality; wherever possible the meat and fat 
are put on, not in lumps, but in a shapely, uni¬ 
form covering ; and she exhibits two elements 
in perfection—those of breeding and feeding. 
In the past forty-eight years the champion 
prize has been won by Short-horns twenty- 
nine times; by Herefords, nine ; by Devons, 
seven ; and by Scotch cattle, three. This fact 
speaks volumes in favor of the capacity of the 
Short-horns for being fattened to the highest 
possible pitch of perfection. But is all this ex¬ 
treme obesity in cattle a desirable thing in 
itself ? We say, no; but it is an old custom to 
get them up for the Smithfield, and it is one of 
the things in which our leading agriculturists 
take a pleasure—a pleasure which is very 
expensive, and which seldom repays the cost. 
♦ > ♦- 
STOCK NOTES. 
Fashion in Stock.— The English papers con¬ 
tain reports of recent sales of sheep. Among 
these the prices obtained for Shropshirea are 
particularly noticeable. This sheep is just now 
the fashion, and breeders are bidding prices up 
well into the three figures. Ewes sold for 120, 
90, 185 and 105 dollars respectively, and rams 
brought from $105 up to $600. This fashion in 
stock hurts more than it helps. It misleads and 
brings disaster to hundreds of that class of 
people from whom—we are told—their money is 
so easily parted. It has been so with the Short¬ 
horn and the Jersey among cattle, and now the 
Guernsey is the rising cow. By and by it may, 
perhaps, become good and solid advice to tell 
farmers to keep stock breeders at a distance, 
lest their money should too easily slip out of their 
own pockets into those of that smart class of 
people. No farmer can now afford to pay $200 
or half of it. for a sheep or a pig, or $500 for a 
cow or a bull. 
The Texan Fever. —Disease is reported to 
be very prevalent amongst cattle in Texas. 
The peculiar form is that of carbuncular 
erysipelas, or what is known as black-leg, 
murrain, or black-quarter. As the Texan stock 
becomes mixed with the improved races, the 
latter and the progeny of the mixture as a 
matter of course may be expected to become 
victims to the prevalent diseases from which 
the semi-wild raeo escapes. This seems to be the 
case, and the more valuable cattle are suffering 
just now more than usual. A sad result of the 
disease is the death by blood poisoning of many 
persons who have been eugaged in skinning the 
carcasses of cattle that have died of the disease. 
This is a fearful fate, as a most painful death 
is inevitable from the least inoculation of the 
poison from the carcass, death being preceded 
by the occurrence of boils, carbuncles and ul¬ 
cers over the whole body. It is safe to bury 
the whole carcass and not risk danger for the 
sake of a hide. 
Some Pork. —The whole number of hogs 
packed during the season of 1877-8 amounted 
to 9,905,000. The aggregate quantity of pork 
and pork products for the year is about 1,800,- 
000,000 pounds, of which more than half was 
exported to foreign countries. With such an 
enormous production, prices have, of course, 
been greatly reduced; but, on the whole, the 
amount of money which has found its way into 
farmers’ pockets from thiB business is over 
$50,000,000. A6 compared with the prices of 
other things, these fifty millions represent as 
much value as the larger amounts in other 
years when prices were higher. It is not the 
money itself, but what the money can effect in 
exchanges, which fixes the value and profit 
from it, and on this basis there is not much to 
complain of in the last season’s pork business. 
Cats. —These useful animals are worthy of 
notice from professional breeders, and we gra¬ 
tuitously give the latter the hint. Dogs have 
had their day as vermin killers, and now chiefly 
furnish subjects upon which farmers can vent 
their surplus spleen and animosity; or material 
for soap boilers and glove makers in the popu¬ 
lous cities. The curly dogs whose skins used 
to furnish overcoat collars and cuffs, have 
disappeared, and the hunting dog has usurped 
the first position at the head of the canine race. 
As useful dogs exist no longer, we might turn 
to cats in place of them. These animals, if 
given a chance, would soon annihilate mice and 
rats, aud beside this use they furnish a valuable 
fur. This is the point to which the stock breed¬ 
ers’ attention is drawn. They might go further 
and fare worse. Jet black and fancy marks in 
cat skins are becoming fashionable, and now 
that the black points of the Jerseys and the 
mealy noses of other cattle are fixed permanent¬ 
ly, the harmless, necessary cat might be put in 
training for solid colors, or such marks and 
points as may be desirable. The business of 
breeding cats is already established in European 
countries, and wc might very well lake a hand 
in it. 
Abortion in Cows. —Herr Mobins expresses 
the opinion that this is often caused by giving 
the animals too cold water to drink. 
