2-888-003 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

Exhibition of the Birmingham and Midland Counties Agricultural Association, in Bingley Hall, Birmingham, 1850. 'Among the pure breeds exhibited, the show of Herefords deserves to take the highest place...Among the show of heavier stock in Broad-street was an extraordinary crossbred animal, of gigantic size, but in the framing of which nature seems to have accompanied the increased proportion with great awkwardness of build, and a wide departure from shapeliness. One of the crosses of sheep appeared to contain some admixture of foreign blood, as if an attempt had been made to increase the frame of the animal and its capacity for taking on flesh, at the same time that the square proportions of the native breeds were preserved. In pigs the show was a very large one, and there were some first-rate animals produced'. From "Illustrated London News", 1850.