tthe article we reproduce :— 
1 June, 1899.] QUEENSLAND AGRICULTURAL JOURNAL. 429 
‘trade without unduly overstocking the home market. From butter to rabbits is 
‘a great jump, but the principle applies here as well. The enormous export of — 
rabbits to London has had the effect of so reducing prices that the poorer 
classes, who might be expected to be large consumers of frozen beef and mutton, 
turn to the imported rabbit as an article of diet to the detriment of the frozen 
meat trade. 
WELGHTY BULLOCKS OF OLDEN TIMES. 
Tue disappearance of the extraordinarily heavy cattle of olden times is a 
‘subject which is dealt with in the following short but interesting article by 
“ Historian,” in the Farmer and Stockbreeder. Certainly very large bullocks 
care occasionally to be met with: We remember to have seen gigantic bullocks 
figuring in the annual “ Mardi gras” procession in Paris. Such beasts were, 
however, systematically fed up for the occasion. Several very exceptionally 
heavy animals have been shown at the Exhibitions of.the National Association 
at Bowen Park, but these are exceptions. 
The average weight of a draft of fat cattle to-day will probably not-average 
more than 700 or 800 lb., and the reasons for this reduce Weight ane, Re : foxth in 
eal pisos GENS 
SOME GIANT CATTLE. \o. fc) 
Formerly, as most people are aware, it was customary foswetkiexén in the 
fields very generally, and after young steers had been trained to the yoke they 
sometimes did duty for 6 or 8 years, so that those of the larger breeds were fed 
to great weights when fattened. Sussex cattle are of immense stature, and 
those of olden times were more bony and gigantic than now; consequently they 
‘were very massive when fed to their utmost capacity of flesh and fat accumula- 
tion. The record of the celebrated Burton ox, fattened at Burton Park, near 
Petworth, states that the height of the animal was 164 hands, his measurement 
from the back of the horns to the tail, 8 feet; his breadth across the back, 
between the hip bones, 2 feet 8 inches; his girth at the heart region, 10 feet ; 
and his weight 287 stone 41b. Youatt states that Mr. Ellman had a Sussex ox 
which weighed 214 stones, this one measuring 9 feet 6 inches from the crown 
of his head to his rump, and girthing 9 feet behind shoulders. Mr. Edsaw’s ox 
was still heavier, weighing 216 stone, and his girth was LO feet. 
The weight of the famous Lincolnshire ox of the last century was 2,800 Ib., 
the height of which was stated to be 6 feet 4 inches, and his width across the 
haunches 8 feet 4 inches. Other famous oxen slaughtered at the latter part of 
the last century were one at Leek, which weighed 2,369 lb., and another in the 
Isle of Lewis, of the Hebrides, whose weight was 2,423 lb. It is stated in 
Pitt’s “Agricultural Survey of Staffordshire” that in 1794 a Longhorn ox 
belonging to Lord Donegal was slaughtered, the carcass weight of which was 
1,988 Ib., the tallow being 200 Ib., and weight of the hide 177 lb. Pitt also 
informs us that “At Myr. Huskison’s, at Oxley, near Wolverhampton, there 
have been two instances of cows, bred on the farm and fattened there, to 
upwards of 18 score lb. per quarter, one weighing 374 1b. per quarter. These 
cows made to the butcher 40 guineas each.” Most likely such bulky, massive 
carcasses, over-larded with fat, would yield far less nowadays. Times have . 
changed so much that the Smithfield Club will no longer haye cows of any kind 
at its shows. The London butchers gave very little for them in the latter years» 
when they did appear. Consumers, they say, will only buy small joints of prime 
quality, not made too fat, and some of the chilled American beef would suit the 
popular taste far better than the big joints of fattened beeves of either sex. 
SMITHFIELD GIANTS AND CAUSES OF THEIR DISAPPEARANCE 
At the very first Smithfield Club Show in 1799, a Hereford ox fed by Mr. 
Grace, of Buckinghamshire, stood 7 feet high, weighed upwards of 260 stone, 
and measured in girth 12 feet 4 inches, while Mr. Westcar’s first prize bullock, 
Fl 
3 See 
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