STOCK HTTSBANDRY. 141 



If working oxen and beef raising are to be your specialty, 

 patronize the best Shorthorn or Hereford bull possible, 

 according to your fancy of the two breeds. Select with 

 especial care heavy fleshed, choice quality animals, and in 

 order to carry this branch of husbandry to the highest point 

 of perfection, and thereby make the greatest gain, never 

 allow the animals to lose their calf flesh. "Daily gain," 

 should be the motto from birth to death. If he is a public 

 benefactor who causes tWo blades of grass to grow where but 

 one grew before, what shall be said of him who grows two 

 pounds of fat, juicy beef or mutton upon the same amount 

 of feed that has grown one before? And yet this is possible. 

 We can not only raise to sell twenty-five thousand more oxen 

 in the State of Maine annually, worth $1,250,000, but we 

 can by judicious selections and proper care and management 

 enhance the annual profit on the number now kept fully as 

 much more, making a difierence in favor of the farmers of 

 Maine of $2,500,000 annually in this branch of husbandry 

 alone. Is not this worth looking after? Is not this a matter 

 of sufficient importance to demand our attention? Yet this 

 is not all the benefit to be derived from a departure from our 

 present mode of stock raising. It may be the means of 

 turning many of the farmers' barns back again from the 

 training stable to their former and more legitimate occupancy, 

 that of being a stock farm indeed ; and what is of vast more 

 importance, encouraging the boys to take a lively interest in 

 this branch of industry, which will be a source of pleasure 

 and profit to them and a blessing to our country. 



Brother farmers of Aroostook, yours is a glorious heritage. 

 Nature has been lavish with her gifts. I am more than 

 pleased with your country. I am delighted, and with Sheba's 

 Queen I can truly say, the half has never been told. Yet 

 I would say, let the watchword be for every fiirmer and every 

 lover of our cause. Improvement. Send the word all along 

 the line, until it echoes and re-echoes around every fireside in 

 the State. 



