ow reaches in horned
cattle alone an annual export of nearly three quarters of a million
animals. All manner of practical discussions were set on foot, ranging
from the production of the ideal, the general purposes cow, to that
controversy which competes, in the virulence with which it is waged,
with the political, the educational, and the fiscal questions--the
question whether the hackney strain will bring a new era of prosperity
to Ireland, or whether it will irretrievably destroy the reputation of
the Irish hunter. The discussion of these problems has been accompanied
by much practical work which, in due time, cannot fail to produce a
considerable improvement upon the breed of different classes of live
stock. In one year over one thousand sires have been selected by the
experts of the Department for admission to the stock improvement
schemes. Probably an equal number of breeding animals offered for
inspection have been rejected. Many a _cause celebre_ has not
unnaturally arisen over the decisions of the equestrian tribunal, and
there have not been wanting threats that the attention of Parliament
should be called to the gross partiality of the Department which has
cast a reflection upon the form of stallion A or upon the constitutional
soundness of stallion B. On the whole, as far as I can gather, the best
authorities in the country are agreed that since the Department has
been at work there has been established a higher standard of excellence
in the bucolic mind as regards that vastly important national asset, our
flocks and herds.

Again for details I must refer the reader to official documents. There
he will find as much information as he can digest about the vast variety
of agricultural activities which originate sometimes with the
Department's officers or with its _Journal_ and leaflets, the
circulation of which has no longer to be stimulated from our Statistics
and Intelligence bureau, and sometimes emanate from the local
committees, whose growing interest in the work naturally leads to the
discovery of fresh needs and hitherto unthought of possibilities of
agricultural and industrial improvement. I may, however, indicate a few
of the subjects which have been gone into even in these years while the
new Department has been trying so far as it might, without sacrifice of
efficiency and sound economic principle, to keep pace with the feverish
anxiety of a genuinely interested people to get to work upon schemes
whi