CONSTERNATION.
Best thorough-bred horse over four years old: owned by John B. Burnet.
SOUTH DOWN SHEEP.
Best Middle-Wooled Ewe, over Two Years Old: Owned by Lewis G. Morris.
Of Sheep, there were a large number present—at a rough guess, Two Thousand—embracing specimens of widely contrasted varieties. The fine-wooled Saxonies and Merioes were largely represented; so were coarse-wooled but fine-fleshed Bakewells and Southdowns. For three or four years past, the annual product of wool, especially of the finer qualities, has been unequal to the demand, causing a gradual appreciation of prices, until a standard has this year been reached above the value of the staple. Speculators, who had observed the gradual rise through two or three seasons, rushed in to purchase this year's clip, at prices which cannot be maintained, and the farmers have received some hundreds of thousands of dollars more for their wool than the buyers can ever sell it for. This has naturally reacted on the price of sheep, whereof choice specimens for breeding have been sold for sums scarcely exceeded during the celebrated Merino fever of 1816-18. Bona fide sales for $100 each and over have certainly been made; and it is confidently asserted that picked animals from the flocks of a famous Vermont breeder were sold, to improve Ohio flocks, at the late Fair of that State—a buck for $1,000, and six ewes for $300 each. These reports, whether veritable or somewhat inflated, indicate a tendency of the times. Where sheep are grown mainly for the wool, it is as absurd to keep those of inferior grades, as to plant apple-trees without grafting and grow two or three bushels of walnut-sized, vinegar-flavored fruit on a tree which might as well have borne ten bushels of Spitzenbergs or Greenings. But there is room also for improvement and profit in the breeding of sheep other than the fine-wooled species. The famous roast-mutton of England ought to be more than rivaled among us; for we have a better climate and far better sheep-walks than the English in the rugged mountain districts of New-England, of Pennsylvania, and of our own State. The breeding of large, fine-fleshed sheep of the choicest varieties, on the lines of all the railroads communicating with the great cities, is one of the undertakings which promise largest and surest returns to our farmers, and it is yet in its infancy. A hundred thousand of such sheep would be taken annually by New-York and Philadelphia at largely remunerating prices. Thousands of acres of sterile, scantily timbered land on the Delaware and its branches might be profitably transformed into extensive sheep-walks, while they must otherwise remain useless and unimproved for ages. These lands may now be bought for a song, and are morally certain to be far higher within the next dozen years.
LONG-WOOLED SHEEP.
Best long-wooled buck and ewe over two years old: owned by J. McDonald and Wm. Rathbone.
Of Swine there were a good many exhibited at the Fair, but we did not waste much time upon them. The Hog Crop once stood high among the products of the older States, but it has gradually fallen off since the settlement of the great West, and the cheapening of intercommunication between that section and the East, and is destined to sink still lower. Pork can be made on the prairies and among the nutwood forests and corn-bearing intervales of the West for half the cost of making it in New-England; no Yankee can afford to feed his hogs with corn, much less potatoes, as his grandfather freely did. Only on a dairy farm can any considerable quantity of pork be profitably made east of the Ohio; and he who keeps but a pig or two to eat up the refuse of the kitchen cares little (perhaps too little) for the breed of his porkers. So let them pass.
"Fancy" Fowls are among the hobbies of our day, as was abundantly evinced at the State Fair. Coops piled on coops, and in rows twenty rods long, of Chinese, Dorking, and other breeds of the most popular domestic bird, monopolized a large share of attention; while geese, ducks, turkies, &c., were liberally and creditably represented. The "Hen Convention," which was a pet topic of Boston waggery a year or two since, might have been easily and properly held at Rochester. Many of these choice barn-yard fowls were scarcely inferior in size while doubtless superior in flavor to the ordinary turky, while the farmer who opens the spring with a hundred of them may half feed his family and at the same time quite keep down his store-bill with their daily products. Small economies steadily pursued are the source of thrift and competence to many a cultivator of flinty and ungenial acres; few farmers can afford to disregard them. If thrice the present number of fowls were kept among us, their care and food would scarcely be missed, while their product would greatly increase the aggregate not only of thrift but of comfort.