The Best Beast in the Show,

proherty of His Royal Stigtvia the de nce of & Wales, and the winner of the Champion Fate A. LUV at the Imanfield Club. how, December 1874

for iblished by Haterson & Furford, Strand 1976

THE FARMER'S MAGAZINE.

JULY, 1875.

PLATE.

THE BEST BEAST IN THE

SHOW,

A SHORTHORN HEIFER, THE PROPERTY OF HIS ROYAL HIGHNESS THE PRINCE OF WALES.

Extra stock heifer or cow.-Prize of £20 and silver, prize of the Smithfield Club on the very eve of his medal-Champion plate of £100 as best beast in the show-to His Royal Highness the Prince of Wales, of Sandringham, King's Lynn, Norfolk, Shorthorn, 4 years 5 months, bred by Hugh Aylmer, of West Dereham Abbey, Stokeferry, Norfolk, sire British Crown, dam Jewess, sire of dam Rifleman; fed on maize. linseed and bean meal, roots and hay. Weight 20 cwt. 6 lb. So run the records of the Smithfield Club for December, 1874. The white heifer had also been exhibited the previous year in her class, when she was commended. She then suffered much from the fog, but being deemed good enough to keep on, Mr. Beck nursed her for a couple of months at an off farm of his own, with what result is well known; as we thus wrote of her triumph at the time: We question whether there ever was a more popular verdict either with nine judges, or as backed by outside opinion, than that which gave the 100 gs. to His Royal Highness the Prince of Wales' almost perfect heifer, It is, indeed, something of a happy accident, or rather coincidence, that the Prince should thus win the premier

succeeding to the office of President of the Club; and, we may add, emphatically, winning it so worthily. Of singularly taking,' placid, Shorthorn character, what with her lengthy, true outline, and level feeding, this heifer exhibits a rare combination of excellence of high breeding and good doing. Bought out of Mr. Aylmer's herd the white is probably of better descent than any other Shorthorn in the show; while she is not over done, and her condition called for none of that commiseration whieh one so often feels for a suffocating hog or a satiate citizen. Towards the close of the week her expressive eye did certainly tell something of the sufferings she had undergone literally at the hands of an admiring public; her martyrdom being pointed by an advertisement, in very bad taste, as to the champion heifer being about to be roasted whole at Cremorne. Before even she came out for the plate the Sandringham belle had beaten something in her class, as the highly commended heifer, Mr. Viveash's red, was the best two-year-old in 1873 at the West of England meeting at Plymouth, and the Royal show at Hull,

As soon as the Agricultural Holdings Bill has passed, the wants of their estates. Lord Leicester, however, has the landlords, if they are wise, will contract themselves no doubt good grounds to go on, as a majority of the out of it: such is the advice of Lord Leicester, as given landlords" are, of course, already but too anxious a few days since. It is true that this exhortation is to afford their tenants every facility for doing the somewhat qualified by the contingent corollary that "we best by their own capital and by the land they are indebted to her Majesty's Government for the prin- cultivate, and accordingly Lord Leicester is " opposed ciples contained in the bill; and I trust that the majority to all, or nearly all, interference on the part of of the landlords will adopt those principles-selecting the Legislature." This is the point of the those clauses and making those arrangements that are Fakenham speech, although the premises scarcely lead up best adapted to meet the wants of their respective to such a result, which comes the rather as an anti-climax, estates." That a majority of landlords, ill-informed on or non-sequitur. The landlords do not require any this question and with a dim dread of they know not interference in order to make them do full justice to the what, will adopt the example of so eminent an agri-land; as this is how Lord Leicester illustrates the position: cultural authority, and at once render themselves independent of the Act, is tolerably certain; while it remains to be seen how they will interpret the somewhat indefinite reference to the principles best adapted to meet OLD SERIES.

"We hear from all quarters that the production of food from the soil is far below what it might be were certain hindrances at present existing removed. Some years back I stated that if England was thoroughly well culti VOL. LXXVIII, No. 1.

B

vated, the production of food might be doubled. That statement has been much criticised. I certainly did not intend that it should be taken literally, neither did I intend that the increased production should apply principally to the cereals, But I am not inclined, after due consideration, to deviate materially from the views I then expressed. When I see how few farm-buildings are adapted for carrying on the business of the farm, how few farms are laid out where steam and modern machinery can be applied to advantage, the enormous amount of waste land occupied with fences with trees in them that are neither ornamental nor profitable, but are most injurious to the land under cultivation, that a considerable portion of some of the best land of England is undrained, or only partially drained, and that only half the capital is employed in agriculture that might be used, I think, I might safely state that if all hindrances were removed, he would be a bold man who would define a limit to the production of the soil."

How ably, how graphically, and how truly this state of things is depicted; and yet what does it all come to? That the landlords, by liberal arrangements, are inviting the full flow of capital on to the soil, in order, we will assume, to carry out that work which they themselves are perhaps scarcely able to accomplish? On the contrary, Lord Leicester tells us that "only half the capital is employed in agriculture that might be used," and that practically there is no security for capital, no security of tenure, and no freedom of cultivation." Could there be a much worse condition than this? As with whom rests the blame? Not with the farmers, not with the people, for Lord Leicester quotes Mr. James Howard to show that if there were ample security for capital, "it would be forthcoming, to an extent but little anticipated." And Lord Leicester would ensure these supplies by urging the landlords, who have done so little as yet of their own free will, to defy the Act, and dam the course of the river of plenty. There is barely a word in the admirable opening, or greater part of Lord Leicester's address, but which goes directly to contradict the impotent conclusion at which it arrives.

The simple truth is that Lord Leicester judges other

men by himself, or, as Sir William Bagge said, "the landlords of England could not do better than accept the Holkham lease, which contained everything that a tenant could desire." Had Lord Leicester intimated something of this, had he explained as something of a sequel or a moral to the sad story which he had been telling, why he gave security of capital, security of tenure, and freedom of action, then there can be no doubt but that his speech would have been throughout one of the most able and advantageous ever offered on the subject. Lord Leicester's words have weight, because he practises what he preaches; and on his own case the Government Act would have little or no bearing. But then Lord Leicester is a landlord in ten thousand, or ten hundred thousand, and that which we seek is to extend the use of the Holkham lease or the Lincoln custom, How far these have extended as yet, Lord Leicester himself shows in the picture he draws of the country. In place of agreements giving security for capital and freedom of action, there is on a majority of estates little more than a good understanding to go on-a principle which jealously resents any alteration as an innovation, and countenances outlay and improvement on the good understanding that this is encountered at the risk of the man who finds the money and does the work. In my opinion, a good understanding is more likely to exist when the tenant is not entirely dependent on the will of the landlord: so said Lord Leicester at Fakenham.

Men who come to such conclusions as Lord Leicester. does are reading the times all wrong, when they think that any thorough improvement in our system of tenure can be accomplished by the mere force of example. Something has been and will be done by such a means ; but the majority of landlords and land-agents are prone to doing as they have done and nothing more, as we see evidence of this on all sides. It is for such that the Agricultural Holdings Bill was framed, and although there is no hope, at least for the present, of making the measure compulsory, people should be shamed into observing it, rather than encouraged to defy its enactIt is in this way that Lord Leicester's speech is calculated to do so much harm.

ment.

THE THOROUGH-BRED HORSE AT THE AGRICULTURAL SHOW.

The Council of the Royal Agricultural Society of, the one great greed for "the shillings" and to the banishEngland never made a movement more in accordance ment from its boxes of the pure-bred sire. The thoroughwith the times than when it resolved to offer a hundred bred class has been not of" doubtful," but direct advanpounds premium for a thorough-bred horse; as this went tage; while a strong majority of the animals exhibited have far to establish the nag show, which had previously lin- been on hire at fees quite within the reach of the tenantgered on, if it had not utterly died away. And the farmer, who essays to breed a hunter or a hack with any Council of the Royal Agricultural Society never took a due appreciation of what he is about. The Agricultural falser step than when it subsequently decided to reduce Hall, however, has had its reward in the receipt of the amount of such a prize; as it thus very gratuitously shillings and the saving of pounds, although even this sought to endanger the success which it had so far kind of thing threatens to fail, as, says a sporting journal, achieved. It is, indeed, very noticeable that certain "there can be no doubt that the show is far less inmembers of the Hanover-square board take every oppor- teresting now than in its earlier days, and the abandonment tunity to disparage the most popular feature in the of the class for thorough-bred stallions has robbed it of summer show; thus, in reporting on Bedford last year, one great attraction." The very shillings have fallen the senior steward, when he comes to the horses, straight-away, and the sales on commission, of which so much way begins to talk of " the attractions for the shillings," just as if he were one of the managers of the Islington Hall, as, in fact, he is. He next proceeds to write down the prizes for thorough-bred stallions as "of doubtful advantage," and to speak of the horses exhibited as serving at fees "far beyond the pocket of the average tenant;" just, in fact, as his fellow-manager had been writing of the thorough-bred horse anent their Islington exhibition. But let the Council of the Royal Society pause before it lowers the national meeting to the level of Islington-to

was made as an inducement for owners to enter their horses, have been designated by high authority as a regular coping affair."

Let, we repeat, the Royal Agricultural Society take warning in time; and yet at the meeting of the Council the other day there was a deal of wild talk on the breeding of horses. Lord Eslington "referred to the fact that the Society had been unable to attract proper animals to its shows by the offer of considerable prizes for thorough-bred stallions," a fact which we at once