THE SMITHFIELD CATTLE SHOW.

Daily Southern Cross, Volume XVII, Issue 1380, 5 March 1861, Page 4

THE SMITHFIELD CATTLE SHOW.

The " Athenaeum," to which the public is alieady indebted, for many giapluc and well-Studied articles on jjopular subjects of the day,has given the opening columns of its last unpiession to the gi eat event which precedes Christmas in London, viz , the Baker stieet Cattle-show— a show that is visited by all classes., from the Queen to the humblest individual who can hope for only the sparest slice of Christinas beef From this most interesting aifcicle we ofiev our leaders the following extract • — What is there in the flesh of bullocks, that we should honoui it ? in the fat of bullocks, that we should glory mit 1 It leqiuics time, money, and ingenuity to lure a pig through a piotracted excels of bailey meal, till it is encased m such heavy folds of adipose tissue that it can no longer stand up to its light bieakfast of coin mash ; till it divides the hours not devoted to mastication between gasps, grants, and slurnbei, never manifesting sign of that spnghtliness of humoiu with which it once kicked and squealed in the farm-yard. An intimate knowledge of the animal's organisation, and much delicate calculations, is required before a bleeder can fix upon any poicme frame the greatest possible weight of meat; convey the object of his care from a distant county up to Baker street ; and support it under the depressing influences of an untried air and a new residence We coidd point to a breeder, notable for his pigs, who allowed so little margin for fatigue of tiavel and strange beds that he baiely escaped losing the rewaid due to his anxious toil. Just five minutes after the judges had assigned him the first prize, the brute sank under the weight of superimposed fat, and died before the public could enjoy the privilege of beholding it "7 didn't expect that," observed tho ownei, fiankly acknowledging his astonishment ' "I had made sure of its holding out the day. The butcher might have killed it before night." The winner of a prize from the Smithfield Club has to pass many troubled moments befoie attaining the object of his ambition It would, theiefore, be iinf air to depreciate his labom. But considering that it terminates in a few stones more of dead meat m exchange for much valuable meal, the public who look at the Smithfield show as one of the lions of the season — and the very dirtiest of these lions— are apt to think that the exhibitors and their friends make a little too much fuss ciboutit. A brave soldier, after enduimg twelve months' suffering and hardship in the trenches, and after risking his own life and the happiness of his children a countless number of times, receives, in acknowledgment of liis sei vices, a silver medal. The breeder who, at an exhibition of the Smithfield Cattle Show, can display the best ox or steer, the best cow or heifer, the best long-woolled sheep, the best short- woolled sheep, or the best pig, society decorates with a gold medal. How is this ? they ask. Why is fat so honourable ? What is it, that its production should be so encouraged 9 Thrifty housewives say it is sheer waste. Men who feed beasts for the butchei's knife tell you that beyond a certain point fat is a dead loss, exceeding the bounds of what they term "legitimate giazmg," in no way paying back the outlay for cake and, meal. Alive, it is "positively hideous," — the ladies say so ; dead, an excess of it offends the fastidious palate. And yet once a year all London joins in an ovation to it. The proudest and wealthiest of our nobles, from the pnnce consort downwaids, contend for the honour of pioducing the greatest possible quantity of it under certain specified conditions. To witness the grand metiopohtan spectacle of fat cattle ciowds come up fiom every part of the kingdom ; portly farmers in topboots blocking up our thoroughfares, whilst the bold, sweeping curves of rotund animal life ask for admiration in every illustrated newspaper. What is the explanation of these riddles? The peison best fitted to answer these questions would be one uniting the practical knowledge of a breeder with the sympathies of a scholar and the .wisdom of a statesman. Nor is such a conjunction of qualities to be smiled at as an impossibility. They were found in Edmund Burke, who at the same time and with equal earnestness, instructed Lord Rocldngham in polities, and enlightened Arthur Young on such subjects as trench ploughing, loam soils, the best means of fattening pigs, and the piofits to be derived from the cultui oof carrots. But the breeder by himself, without the learning of the schools, could do much in way of reply to the interrogatories. Under his tieatment, the subject would assume an interest startling to the novice. It is a vulgar mistake to suppose that fat is the end of either breedtr or feeder. Adipose tissue presents itself only as the concomitant of the breeder's production, not as the pioduction itself. The problem of his art is, how to bring into existence annuals that yield the greatest possible weight of meat for the butcher's knif e, the table and the consumption of man, at the smallest possible cost; and if the method of his vocation weie unknown, its results would appear as magical as anything Professor Houdin achieves for the astonishment of his visitors. Give him two beasts, of opposite genders; let them be long-legged, coaise giamed, huge-hoofed, large-horned, hungry creatures, loose and lanky in the barrel, lumbeung in the shoulder, ,with boues exceeding the weight of their bodies, when in their plumpest condition ; give him these hungry beasts, capable of devouring a whole county before they will be fit to nourish a single laige family for a week, and at the last, after being embowelled and flayed.not yielding a pound of flesh moie tender than what might be cut from the haunch of a Shoreditch cab-horse ; give him, also, a certain amount of grass-

land, provender, and housing, — and, ere many years have passed, he will put in your hands, in return for those lean and worthless kine, a drove of beasts, each of which shall be small and compact before/extensive and fleshy behind, \ntik. in nock, head, aud bones, and top heavy with a vast circular body that takes i into itself nothing which is not soon converted into tender aud juicy meat. "Sir," said Dr. Johnson, when ho was caught in Thrale's brewery, bustling about in great excitement, with an ink-horn and pen in his button hole, "we are not here to soil a paicol ofboileis and vats,, but the potentiality of glowing rich beyond the wildest dreams of avarice." So it is with glazing, but under diffeient and moie trying chcumstanccs. Your true gio/ner and breeder fabncates wealth 'beyond the wildest dieanis of avarice,' almost out of nothing. When Dr. Paikmson told Paley that Bakewoll, the introducer of the Leicester sheep, could fatten his sheep id whatever part of the body he wished and that the pioblem was how to lead the plumpness to the shoulder, neck, or leg, the moial phdosopher replied, "It's a lie, sir ; and that's the solution of the pioblem," Dr. Parkinson, however, told the simple truth. In the course of a few generations, though not m the life of an individual sheep, Bakewell could have seduced the preponderance of flesh from one part of the bodies of his flock to any other part. Indeed, short of putting their heads duectly over their tails, he could have effected any conceivable mutation m the form of his sheep. "The puuciple of selections," &ays Youatt, "is that which onables the agriculturist not only to modity the character of his flock, but to change it altogether. It is the magician's wand, by meaus of which he may summon into hie whatever foim aud mould he pleases." By exercising this principle of selection ; by mating his animals so that their progeny were endowed with certain prominent peculiarities ; and by repeating this process again aud again, the distinguishing formation of the fust paients being moie aud more developed ■with each succeeding generation Bakewell effected those maivels m his, profession, for winch lus society was sought by princes and nobles. But the cattle breeder is not always bent on pio" ducmg a new stock ; he thoroughly enjoys nurturing and training the individual. He knows the beast he takes under his especial notice as intimately as a jocky knows the hoise with which he wins the Dei by. Feeling with it, he is alive to eveiy constitutional difficulty under which it labouis, mentally passing through the same sensations it experiences coiporally. The.irtistic zeal ofbreedois can be apjireciated only by those who know them Some years since, dunug a visit to an eminent Butish agiicultunst, our host amused ub by the warmth with which he described the merits and uhosynciasies of the fruit mhisgieenhouses aud orchards. "That pear," he said, "is in its paifectiou of ripeness foi only three hours. "Whenever I see one coming to its delicious maturity, I watch it , I can feel it upen and flavour up ; and at the veiy nick of time I take it oft and eat it. The man who gets that pear m the middle hour is a foitunate man — a very fortunate man." What he felt foi the ripening peai, he felt for a favounte amongst his fattening beasts. An inner joy informed him when the cieature was going on well, when the muscle was coming up in soft, sweet, soluble fibre, when the fat was creaming out between the inteiior muscles, "marbling" the nch mass, asthebutcheis term it. The Inshman starved his pigs one day aud fed them the next, so that, as poik, they might cut up in stieaks of fat and lean alternate. Under our fiiend, with nobler cieatures and by another process, this desirable phenomenon is achieved In taking a beast through the various stages of feeding, he is buoyant with a tiiumphant gladness, similar to that experienced by a huntsman taking a hotse, well bred and "up to this woik," acioss a dangeious line of stiff couutiy. By the obsei vation of a thousand subtle and evei varying symptoms, he is determined how to regulate the consumption of the turnip, what hunt to put to the daily hay, m what proportions and at what hours, to distribute the giatetul and beautyfymg oilcake. In the same spmt he lifts his animal over the giound to the last— even to the death and the table He would have the pear plucked, at some esjiecially opportune moment when the aroma of ripeness enriches eveiy vein ; and, the butcher having performed his barbaious functions, ho would have its choicest parts cooked and seived at some middle hour, and put before that last and noblest work of civilisation, an accomplished gourmet Such aie the bieedei's labour's — labours winch give the humble health, stieugth, and contentment — indeed, all the physical and moial blessings that follow in the wake of 'cheap meat ' , and which confei on the educated and refined those exquisite delights of intellect and fancy that .ire experienced only during the courses of a. really " good dinner." Possibly they do not necessitate much denial of self, but they contribute largely to the enjoyment of others. Such labours cannot well be ovei -rated. The danger is lather that fiom not bGiug properly uudei->tood they may be undervalued. Charles Lamb did wisely m suspecting, on other topics, the judgment of a man whould not appreciate a luxurious canine. And, in. political science, the fact that above all otheis lias the most pathetic moral consideiations attached to it, is the truth that wheie theie is present tho most biead to feed men with, theie is also the least need for rope to hang them with. Those T\ho satirize cattle shows simply because the beasts exhibited at them are loaded with, costly fat, that is of comparatively small service for human consumption, miss seeing the aim and use of such contests. A gold medal is not awaided to the owner of the fat pig as an encouragement to other swine piopnetois to make then stock prodigiously fat The winner gets the prue for producing an animal constitutionally adapted to convert cheap food into good flesh, and so showing that otheis of its breed may materially benefit society as meat-creatmg machines. To demonstrate that an animal is endowed with this faculty, it is necessary to expend it to the utmost, that the limit of its productive poweis, in respect of quantity, may be discovered In thus ascei taming the extieme weight it can be induced to yield, a huge amount of unprofitable fat is bi ought mto existence But fat alone, or a singular power of secreting fat, will not get an animal a Smithfield medal. The uultiated eye cannot' penetiate the superincumbent masses; but a judge knows by "the feel" ol an animal the sort of meat — fat 01 lean, firm or loose — its interior muscles arc composed of, as easily as a physician, by a touch of the pulse, can discover whether his patient is sick o£ inflammation. Id« deed, long practice in examining first the live forms of beasts aud then their dead caicases, enables breeders, by the unaided eye, without the assistance of touch, to tell of a creature 'what it is like inside.' It would surprise the profane to be told with what accuracy the priests of the Smithfield mysteries can by bight declare the histoiy and worth of a huge ox — its breed, feeding, weight, the quantity aud character of the internal fat, the size, and quality of each joint. At the first outset of the Smithfield club, the judges came to then- decisions iv the following manner. Out of an entire class they selected, by eye and handling, what appeared to them the two best beasts. These weie killed, and after inspecting them dead, and examining then internal stiucture, the cutics determined which was the better of the two. It was however, ere long found needless, as well as embarrassing, to persevere in this plan.

Scene in- an Australian Theatbf. — " The curtain, rose. A. French danoor — an elegant, supple young lady of no great beauty, but much expression, and apparently on very good terms with herself — appeared in the scene in her short lace dress, received by an outburst of applause and by the martial trumpets of the orchestra. But from the other side came a youthful, blooming Spanish Creole, with beautiful eyes large and soft ; her complexion rosy, her figure tall — in fact, the impersonation of Terpsichore. She bowed modestly — it was her fhst appearance at Melbourne — and the enthusiasm of the public, surprised by her beauty, manifested itself in vehement cheeis. The two dancers struggled for the palm 'of victoriy in a graceful tarantula. Like two glittering butteiflies, they whirled lound, accompanied by music and applause. The mercurial Pansienno made use of hei mo»t seductive wiles, of her most refined pirouettes, of her most enchanting attitudes; but the Creole seemed patronized by the Graces themselves, Thundering applause enoouiaged her, and, as often as she came forward with her graceful modesty, nosegays, rings, and bracelets were thrown at her feet. ° The French lady struggled with her last strength against the triumph of her rival, until, disheartened and|exhaus« ted, she fell to the ground. The Creole approached her with compassion to raise her, when suddenly the Pirißienne darted up, and, vrith a look of hatred and fury, boxed the ears of her rival. The audience hissed and hooted, whde she exclaimed with much passion, ' The wretch tripped me !' The poor Creole declared with dignity that she was innocent of the meanness ; but a rulgar word which slipped out of the lips of the French dancer against her suddenly aroused all the passions of the South in her bosom, i and a »mgular struggle began. The two exoited ladie3 rushed upon each other and wrestled and tore, and pulled one another's hair, while the thunders of the gallery made the whole atmo3phere vibrate. I n&ver saw a more natural performance. The better class of the public did not interfere, but seemed rather to bs amused by these Olympic ccercisei, until the Creole bleeding and fainting, was carried away from the scene. Some officers who from a box t had witnesßcd^the spectacle

■were revolted at the conduct of the Parisienne, and sent ' for the police to arrest, her, but her friends collected and resisted the constables. A riot ensued ; » portion of the public rushed on the stage ; they jumped across the orchestra ; the fidles and bass-viols were broken ; the ladies were fainting ; children crying ; and I took to ray heels with my fiddle, and ran away without stopping until I reached my hotel." — Liverpool Mercury. New Zealand Steel. — Ever Bince the settlement of New Zealand by Europeans their attention has been daily called to the peculiarities of a kind of metallic sand along the shores o£ New Plymouth, in Tar*naki. Thie sand has the appearance of fine steel filings, and if a magnet be dropped upon it, and taken up again, the instrument will be found thickly costed with the iron granules. The place where the sand abounds is along the b»se of Mount Egmont, an extinct volcano, and the deposit extends several miles along the coast, to the depth of many feet, and having a corresponding breadth. The geological supposition is that this granulated metal has been thrown out of the volcano along the baae of which it rests into the sea, and theie pulverized. It has been looked upon for a long time as a geogical curiosity, even to the extent of trying to smelt some of it ; but, althongh so many years have passed since it* discovery, it is only recently that any attempt has been made to turn it to a practical account ; in fact, the quantity is so large that people out theie looked upon it as utterly valueless. It formed a standing complaint in the letters of all emigrants that when the sea bieeze was a little up they were obliged to wear veils to prevent being blinded, by the fine sand which stretched for miles along the shore. Captain Morshead, a gontleman in the "West of England, was so much impressed with its value that ho went to New Zealand to verify the repoits made to him in this country, and was fortunate enough to find them all collect. He smelted the ore first in a crucible, and subsequently in a furnace ; the lesults were so satisfactory that he immediately obtained the necessary grant of the sand from the Government, and returned to England with several tons for more conclusive experiments. It has been carefully analyzed in this country by several well-known metallurgists, and has been pronounced to be the puiest ore at present known ; it contains 88 45 of peroxyde of iron, 11 -43 of oxyde of titanium, with silica, and only 12 of waste in 100 parts. Taking the sand as it lies on the beach and smelting it, the produce is Jl per cent, of iron of the veiy finest quality ; and, again, if this sand be subjected to what is called the cementration process, the result iB a tough, first-class steel, which, in its properties, seems to surpass any other description of that metal at present known. The investigations of metallurgical science have found that if titanium is mixed with iron the character of the steel is materially improved; but, titanium being a scarce oie, such a mixtuie is too expensive for oidmary purposes Here, however, nature has Btepped in, and made free gift of both metals on the largest scale. To give some idea of the fineness of this beautiful sand, it will be enough to say that it passes readily through a gauze sieve of 4,900 holes or interstices to the square inch. As soon as it was turned into steel by Mr Musket, of Coleford, Messrs. Mosely, the eminent cutlers and toolmakeis, of New-stieet, Co-vent-garden, were requested to see what could be done with the Taranalu steel. They have tested it in every possible way, and have tried its temper to the utmost, and they say .the manner in which the metal has passed thiough their trials goes far beyond anything that they ever worked in steel before It has been formed into razors, tcissois, saws, penkmyes, table cutlery, surgical instruments, &c, and the closeness of the grain, the fineness of polish, and keenne&s of edge place it in the very foremost rank — almost in the position of a new metal. Some silk-cutting tools have been made, and so adnmably have they turned out that one particular [ firm will m future have no otheis. In the suigical instruments the edges have been examined by the microscope, and have stood the test in keeping the superiority. A number of gentlemen inteiested in such matters have called at Messis. Mosley's, and hEve taken , various articles of this steel away for the purpose of tiying it It is stated to posess peculiar advantages for gun-bariels and boring-cutters for ordinance pmposes. As far as is at present known of this extraordinary metal, it bids fair to claim all the finer classee o£ cutlery and edge tool instruments to itself, so well has everything made fiom it tinned out. Messrs. Mosely, in whose hands the sole manufacture of cutleiy and edge-tools is vested for this country, have placed a case, filled with the metal in all ies stages, in the Polytechnic Institution There is the fine metallic sand, some beautiful specimens of the cutleiy made from it, and the intermediate phases of the iron and steel. An official experiment is expected to be made at some of the vio vernment establishments shortly, and it is also intended to forge some chain cables, anchois, &c , iv order to fully set foith the great superioiity of the Taranaki iron — The Australian Mad