I saw no
such general exhibition of do mestic animals as you have at your
fairs. The horses that took the prizes were of native stock, a very
serviceable breed, excellent for carriage-horses, and admirable in
the cavalry service. The bulls and cows seemed also native and to
the manor born, and were worthy of little remark. The mechanical,
vegetable, and fruit exhibition was in the great glass palace, in the
city, and was very creditable in the fruit department, in the show of
grapes and pears especially. The products of the dairy were less,
though I saw one that I do not recollect ever to have seen in
America, a landscape in butter. Inclosed in a case, it looked very
much like a wood-carving. There was a Swiss cottage, a milkmaid,
with cows in the foreground; there were trees, and in the rear rose
rocky precipices, with chamois in the act of skipping thereon. I
should think something might be done in our country in this line of
the fine arts; certainly, some of the butter that is always being
sold so cheap at St. Albans, when it is high everywhere else, must be
strong enough to warrant the attempt. As to the other departments of
the fine arts in the glass palace, I cannot give you a better idea of
them than by saying that they were as well filled as the like ones in
the American county fairs.
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