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OPENING OF THE WILD WEST SHOW AT ASTON.

On Saturday afternoon Buffalo Bill's famous "Wild West Show" was given at the Aston Lower Grounds for the first time out of London. The great show-fresh from a London success unique in the history of entertainments is expected to be located at Aston for the greater part of the present month, and all due preparations have been made for its reception. The meadow forms an admirable arena for the display. It is even larger than the famous amphitheatre at Earl's Court, and the change from the circus-like floor at Earl's Court to the green turf at Aston pleasantly heightens the illusion. The bicycle-track, too comes in admirably for the racing, which forms a considerable part of the programme, though the track itself suffers terribly under the reckless heels of the fiery mustangs of the prairie. The accommodation for spectators is of course not so good as at Earl's Court, but a grand stand has been erected along the Trinity Road side of the meadow capable of holding at least three thousand persons. All the way round the side of the ground has been banked, so that an enormous number of visitors can obtain an admirable view of the display. On Saturday, as we were sorry to observe, the accommodation was by no means soverely taxed. There was, of course, a great crowd, numbering three or four thousand; but the attendance was by no means commencurate with the extraordinary interest and merit of the exhibition. Of course the show has many disadvantages with which to contend. Of these, the weather is the chief. Saturday was as bright a day as could be looked for at this season of the year- the forenoon quite a blaze of glorious sunshine- but it was nevertheless, a November day, and before the performance closed in the fierce turnult of an Indian attack upon a settler's house November had assorted itself, as the number feet and reddened noses of the spectators grimly attested.The show, too, comes at a time when the Birmingham public is in the first and worst stage of its football fever, and on Saturday two of the chief local clubs were pitted against each other under circumstances of unusual excitement. However, the cold and damp notwithstanding, Buffalo Bill's audience remained attracted and excited to the very last.

"Buffalo Bill's" Wild West is a really great show. The one unique merit of the exhibition is also, from one point of view, its only weakness. We refer to the fact that it is utterly destitute from first to last of the tricks and graces of the popular entertainer. We have no doubt that the astute managers of the enterprise could, if they chose, make the exhibition more showy, give it more variety and excitement, ad so to a certain class of pleasure-seekers endow it with superior attraction. But to those who are a little satiated of the shallow arts and tawdry frippery of the popluar entertainer, the Wild West Show comes with the brisk freshness of the breezes that blow over those boundless prairies whose wild life it is the object of the show to mirror. The "Wild West" is not only realisitic, it is real. It is an honest effort carried out with an enterprise and completeness, which in the whole history of shows have never been equalled, to bring to English audiences some real notion of the wild life of a few years back on the confines of civilisation in North America, when a little army of pioneers, holding their lives in their hands, were piercing the savage haunts of the redskins, and paving the way for the steady march westward of civilisation; and, too, of the wild life of to-day, the life of the cowboys and vaqueros, on the cattle ranches of Kansas and Mexico. It is an American exhibition, but there is nothing American - as the word is sometimes used here - about it but the enterprise with which the advertisement department is conducted. There is no buncombe about it; in every detail it is genuinely, and with studious unpretentionsness, what it protests itself to be.
"Buffalo Bill's" Wild West is a really great show. The one unique merit of the exhibition is also, from one point of view, its only weakness. We refer to the fact that

OPENING OF THE WILD WEST SHOW AT ASTON.

On Saturday afternoon Buffalo Bill's famous "Wild West Show" was given at the Aston Lower Grounds for the first time out of London. The great show-fresh from a London success unique in the history of entertainments is expected to be located at Aston for the greater part of the present month, and all due preparations have been made for its reception. The meadow forms an admirable arena for the display. It is even larger than the famous amphitheatre at Earl's Court, and the change from the circus-like floor at Earl's Court to the green turf at Aston pleasantly heightens the illusion. The bicycle-track, too comes in admirably for the racing, which forms a considerable part of the programme, though the track itself suffers terribly under the reckless heels of the fiery mustangs of the prairie. The accommodation for spectators is of course not so good as at Earl's Court, but a grand stand has been erected along the Trinity Road side of the meadow capable of holding at least three thousand persons. All the way round the side of the ground has been banked, so that an enormous number of visitors can obtain an admirable view of the display. On Saturday, as we were sorry to observe, the accommodation was by no means soverely taxed. There was, of course, a great crowd, numbering three or four thousand; but the attendance was by no means commencurate with the extraordinary interest and merit of the exhibition. Of course the show has many disadvantages with which to contend. Of these, the weather is the chief. Saturday was as bright a day as could be looked for at this season of the year- the forenoon quite a blaze of glorious sunshine- but it was nevertheless, a November day, and before the performance closed in the fierce turnult of an Indian attack upon a settler's house November had assorted itself, as the number feet and reddened noses of the spectators grimly attested.The show, too, comes at a time when the Birmingham public is in the first and worst stage of its football fever, and on Saturday two of the chief local clubs were pitted against each other under circumstances of unusual excitement. However, the cold and damp notwithstanding, Buffalo Bill's audience remained attracted and excited to the very last.
"Buffalo Bill's" Wild West is a really great show. The one unique merit of the exhibition is also, from one point of view, its only weakness. We refer to the fact that