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Show The Texas Longhorn. (Kansas City Star.) When the railroads invaded the range and built shipping tracks from the main lines to the loading pens at the ranch the last excuse for the propagation propa-gation of the long-horn was obliterated. Before the railroads were pu?hed into the great southwest the long-horn was an absolute necessity. When it was compulsory to drive the cattle for the market several hundred miles to reach the nearest shipping point the long-horn long-horn alone was equal to the test. Reside Re-side him the fal. sleek short-horn would have died by the wayside , the first few hours of the journey, but the "Texas ranger" the long-horn was famous both for speed and endurance. His modern rival was an impossibility under frontier conditions. The problem of water supply was another an-other factor in the culture of the long-horn. long-horn. In the early settlement of the southwest the stockmen were forced to depend upon the streams that af-! forded a perpetual supply of water, and there were few of them. That was before the day of the windmill and the artificial lake. Only the long-horn could find pasture in the hills many milts from these streams and make a daily pilgrimage, to the water without detriment to his physical condition. This he would do at a pace which taxed the enduring qualities of the hardy mustangs of the "cow punchers." But with all his commendable traits, the long-horn has no place in the twentieth twen-tieth century scheme. The present civilization civ-ilization demands meat, rather than speed in the marketable production from the range, and the long-horn was not a meat-producer. He was healthy, vigorous and picturesque but never fat. His appetite was prodigious, and his digestion perfect, but he defied every law of nature in his persistent refusal to "take on meat." He might have been to paraphrase, a sentiment from a certain western governor "Ihe rich, juicy meat in the national sandwich," sand-wich," but the long-horn simply would be nothing but horns and bone and muscle. Hence his exit from the pastoral pas-toral stage. |