SWINE, 



Extract from the Report of H. S. Randall, Chairman of the 

 awarding Committee on Swine, at the late State Fair held at Pough- 

 keepsie. 



On the subject of the breeds of swine, your Committee have nothing 

 to offer. They would not assume to decide on a point not submitted 

 to them, and they are, in reality, exceedingly doubtful whether there 

 is any one breed which would prove most profitable in all situations, 

 and under all circumstances. A large variety, for example, might be 

 preferable in grain growing, and particularly in maize growing re- 

 gions, while they might be too great consumers for grazing districts. 

 Your Committee may be permitted to remark that they believe there 

 is too great a tendency among us, as a people, to rush into and follow 

 some fashionable channel in the adoption or selection of our breeds 

 of domestic animals, without sufficient reference to the specific ends 

 sought, or the circumstances under which they are to be pursued. 

 Consequently, the advent of a fashionable breed is usually distinguish- 

 ed by a prevailing mania, the greater or less intensity of which is in- 

 dicated by the scale of prices paid and received. In the scramble 

 which takes place to first obtain the favorite breeds, trifling and ad- 

 ventitious tests of excellence are established, and it would be hard to 

 say whether they most owe their origin to the enthusiasm or empiri- 

 cism of excited buyers and sellers. The curvature of a horn, the 

 number of wrinkles on a neck, or the white hairs on the extremity 

 of a tail, may J to a certain extent, present indicia of a breed or 

 variety, but the shadow should not, as is too often the case, be mis- 

 taken for the substance. An animal may possess the peculiarities of 

 a breed without any of its excellencies, and in forming an estimate of 

 the qualities of an individual, the former point is not to be regarded 

 to the exclusion of, or even in comparison with the latter. Pedigrees, 

 without excellence, are of no consequence : and when they are parad- 

 ed, and lofty sounding names are appropriated to give pretension to 

 inferiority, they become ridiculous. Without pursuing the subject 

 further here, your Committee would remark that although they would 

 conceive it their duty to give preference, other things being equal, to 

 an animal of established breed (and therefore, as experience proves, 

 capable of transmitting with a reasonable degree of certainty, its pro- 



