Volume 67: Macarthur family papers relating to livestock, 1814-1884: No. 354

[Page 354]

Official Report.

Report - 1

The main general division in classification adopted by the Society for the Exhibition grew naturally out of the character proper to its own operations and the temporary extension of its duties, this division being into agricultural and non-agricultural exhibits.  Classification is at all times difficult, and even the distinction above noticed was to a certain extent rough, and open to objection, inasmuch as many things connected with agriculture found their place under the second division, and notably in Section 7, which included food, both fresh and preserved.  It is impossible to draw a hard and fast line, and decide exactly where agriculture begins and where it ends, but for the purposes of the catalogue it was interpreted to mean live stock of all kinds, wool, wine, sugar, agricultural implements and machinery, manures, horticultural products, and farm produce generally;  but at the same time there were in the non-agricultural department a great many entries that were more or less connected with the land, its cultivation, and its produce;  such, for instance, as specimens of indigenous timber, draining tiles, silk, cotton, flax, hemp, fur, skins, animal and vegetable oils, bones, horns, hides, bark, cork, cabbage-tree straw, osiers, feathers, down, hair, bristles, tobacco, carts, drays, waggons, harness, saddlery, &c., &c.

The live stock was kept on exhibition only for a week, and during that period seemed to furnish fully half the attraction to the assembled visitors.  It was fortunate that their curiosity was thus divided, as it would have been impossible for the number of persons collected to have been accommodated within the walls of the building.  As it was, the crowd was broken up into detachments, and room was afforded for tolerably free movement.

Horses.

In the classification of live stock the post of honor was given to the horse, an animal that has played so great a part in assisting in the civilization of man, and which in war and peace has been so largely used to promote his purposes.  Although the steam-engine has, to some extent, invaded what used to be the province of the horse, there seems as much work left for him as ever, and neither in respect of number or quality has the importance of the horse diminished.

The climate of New South Wales is not ill-adapted for the breeding of horses, and very early in its history attention was directed to this department of industry.  The Colony was fortunate in its early days in the importation of a few excellent Arab and thoroughbred stallions, some of which were from the Indian studs, and these gave a well-deserved character to much of the stock - a reputation which, owing to circumstances hereafter alluded to, was not sustained as it should have been.  Some of the earliest mares were imported from the Cape of Good Hope.  They were not of a very superior stamp, being of the Spanish jennett breed, with bad quarters, though showy in action.  The fine facilities offered by the abundance of pasture soon led to the multiplication of horse-stock in the Colony, and if attention to quality had kept pace with the increase in quantity there would have been nothing to complain of.  Unfortunately the task before us now is to get rid as quickly as possible of a great deal of rubbish, and to replace it by stock worth the grass it eats.

The abundance of pasture in the early days may also be mentioned as one of the causes of the excellence of the horse stock.  The native kangaroo grass anthisteria is, especially when in seed, very nutricious, and the stalk is full of saccharine matter, and young stock reared on it thrive excellently.  But of late year the country has been fully stocked, and many horses are bred in cold mountainous districts, where they grow up only half-fed, and never get a fair and full development.

The returns furnished by the Statistical Register, though not perfectly reliable, give a tolerably fair estimate of the horse-stock of the Colony, and exhibit the following numbers of the past ten years:-