Farmers' Week
Whatever may be said of British fanning, the Royal Show is and always has been the best of its sort the world over. The Centenary celebrated in the Windsor Great Park through- out this week is by far the biggest and best in the long series. Why? There are two reasons. One that it is a farmers' show ; the other that it is not a farmers' show. The farmers who attend gather round the judging rings, and no farmers in any part of the world have anything like so general and particular a perception of what constitutes a good animal. They are all judges, though most of them know a good deal more about the points of one breed than of the other twenty- one—to speak of cattle only. The breeds are well scattered over the island: there are, for example, herds of Aberdeen Angus even in Cornwall ; and the Shorthorn or Durham cattle are everywhere. Yet the distinction of Britain is its infinite variety ; and the breeds are numerous partly because the climes are numerous. The Down sheep have fleeces that themselves suggest the short, sweet turf of the South Downs, and the Lincoln Longwools belong to a coarser herbage and more northerly climate. The Welsh ponies are full of Cymric fire and the Clydesdale has the strength and vigour of the North.
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