AT ENGLAND'S LEADING SHOW.

Hawera & Normanby Star, Volume XXXXI, Issue 70454, 3 October 1900, Page 4

AT ENGLAND'S LEADING SHOW.

A well-known Canterbury farmer, at present visiting England, in a letter to Mr M. Murphy, the secretary of the Canterbury A. and F. Association, gives some of his impressions of the Boyal Agricultural Show, which are of an interesting character. Of the draught horses he says they seemed very good, the judges evidently having no objection to their having white legs up to the knees ; the judge of the hackneys seemed to favor animals of a similar.description. " I asked him," continues the writer, "if they were breeding them for some circus troupe ?" Bespecting the sheep, he told one of the leading breeders that he should take a trip to the Christchurch Show. ll What is wrong with us ?" asked the breeder. " Well," replied Mr Murphy's correspondent, "I think you should show a sheep with twelve months' wool on it, and not two months' — and wool in its natural state, not daubed with oil, and raddle. It is more like a door mat than a fleece of wool." It appears that the sheep are led by hobbles when they are to be examined by the judges, and are not standing in a natural position. He thinks the judges cannot see the fleece for dirt. " You will see," he continues, " a pen of sheep containing an old ram as high as a wire fence and two or three old owes -with udders as big as niany of our cows' mixed up with some good butchers' sheep. The cattle are arranged in like manner. The auctioneer and as many buyers as possible get into the pen." Referring to the display of implements, the New Zealander remarked to a friend : " The same old implements as you had fifty years ago," to which the reply was, " It is no use showing anything new in England." He remarks that he had not seen a disc harrow, either at any of the English shows or in the fields.