udying the question of breeds with a view to purchase for
breeding purposes, were never so numerous nor so much in earnest.

Under such circumstances, it may easily be imagined that the awards of
prizes, not for the money value of the prizes themselves, but for the
bearing of such honors upon the interests of exhibitors in regard to
sales, assumed an unusual importance and involved a corresponding
responsibility on the part of this board. Impressed, as I think, with a
proper sense of that responsibility, and of the embarrassment which
always surround that position, as your representative I discharged the
duty to the best of my ability.

The most serious and perhaps, the only embarrassment which I should
refer to in this report, was the absence of so large a proportion of the
members of awarding committees originally selected, rendering it
necessary to fill the places of the absentees by selections from the
by-standers after the cattle had been called to the rings. Some of you
"have been there" and have a realizing sense of the difficulties
involved in the effort to make these substitutions intelligently and
with conscientious care, on the spur of the moment. To do so in all
cases with satisfaction to one's self is simply impossible, and to do it
in all cases with satisfaction to unlucky competing exhibitors is not to
be expected. If I could do the first and feel sure that the talisman had
been wisely selected, it would be easy to disregard complaints, if any,
which are known to be unjust.

The question of so modifying our committee system as to avoid the
embarrassment I have referred to and thus to secure a better deserved
confidence in the justice of the awards is one I hope to hear discussed
at this meeting as it has been probably at every meeting of our
predecessors for the past thirty years.

Possibly we are in the light of our own experience, with a different
system at the Fat Stock Shows prepared to try something else at the
fairs; but of this I do not feel certain.

THE FAT STOCK SHOW.

The remarks I have made in regard to the display at the fair and the
great interest it excited apply with, if possible, still greater force
to the Fat Stock Show. Your record shows all material facts in respect
to numbers and quality of the stock on exhibition, and I need not
enlarge.

The importance of this enterprise, in its relation to the meat supply of
the world, can hardly be over-stated, and its direct results to th