competition, the assembling together of breeders from all counties and even from abroad, the comparison of the different animals brought together, and the conclusions drawn in many minds, tend materially to the elucidation and advancement of the science of breeding. Persons resident in remote localities are apt to set up for themselves some particular standard of excellence, and make it the whole aim of their endeavors to obtain and develop certain points in an animal, and having done this they rest satisfied; but when the annual cattle show places before them other and evidently superior animals, they perceive how much too limited, and often how erroneous, have been their views, and set to work afresh to improve upon the knowledge thus acquired.
But there is no good without its attendant evil. It was, doubtless, originally intended by those who established the distribution of prizes for certain kinds of stock, that the prize animal should be the most excellent as to its points, the most useful to the farmer, breeder, and butcher, and altogether the most profitable; but not that it should be the fattest! It is reported that, on Hannah More being asked what was the use of cattle-shows, she replied, "To induce people to make beef and mutton so fat that nobody can eat it." This certainly is the abuse of them, and in no class of animals is it carried to such an extent as in swine. The greedy propensities of the poor animal are worked upon; he is shut up, often in darkness, and fed and suffered to gorge himself until he can scarcely move or breathe, and often dies of suffocation, or is obliged to be killed, from the simple exertion of being brought to the show in the most easy and careful manner. A premium would be far better bestowed upon the most useful and profitable animal, the one most likely to make good bacon or pork, than on these huge masses of obesity, whose superabundance of fat is fit for little else but the melting-pot. As much money is often wasted on one of these monsters as would purchase food for half a dozen really profitable animals. And to what purpose? Simply to test the elastic power of a pig's skin? "No," reply the advocates of this species of monomania, "but to discover which breeds can be fattened to the greatest size in the shortest time, and on the smallest amount of food." And to this plea we can only reply, that while we admit the value of such knowledge, we think it might be attained without the sacrifice of a fine animal, at much less expense, and far more satisfactorily. Let the animals be fat, but do not let them be a mere bladder of lard, "of shape undefined," every point lost and buried. It is fine and profitable breeds we require, not monstrosities. The grand aim of agricultural societies is to promote the improvement, of the breeds, and consequently the profit of the breeder, and general advantage. We trust that this will shortly be fully understood and carried out, and the cattle-shows become, as it were, model-rooms, instead of mere exhibitions of over-fed, pant-
