SELECTED PAPERS. 



IMPROVEMENT OF DAIRY STOCK. 



A Paper read at the Meeting of the Maine Dairyman's Asso- 

 ciation AT Newport, 

 By SEWARD DILL, President of toe Association. 



There are three great branches of industry for which our State 

 affords rare facilities : they are Agriculture, Commerce and Man- 

 ufactures. The two last are so intimately connected with the first, 

 and 80 dependent upon it, that without its prosperity they must 

 languish and die. It is presumed this proposition is self-evident 

 to all who have given the subject even a casual consideration. 



Now, inasmuch as Dairying at the present time constitutes one 

 of the leading branches of agriculture, it will be readily seen that 

 its interests are of the highest moment to all. Any system, then, 

 which in practice will give us better cows for dairy purposes, will 

 confer an immense benefit upon mankind. If you go among many 

 farmers and suggest an improvement in their cows, they will reply, 

 " My cows are good enough, first rate," &c. And if you intimate 

 that the cows need a little better care, they reply, that they under- 

 stand their own business, and insinuate gently the propriety of 

 your attention to yours ; and all this, too, in the face of the facts 

 that the average of cows in this State are not worth fifty per cent. 

 of a first-class animal, and that more than half of them are not 

 properly cared for. 



Thanks, however, to our schools and press, the most of our far- 

 mers are interested in improvements. The grazing lands of Europe 

 are each year becoming less in proportion to the population ; the 

 dairy products are those that few families will do without. Our 

 exports are destined to be larger ; the dairying interest is yet to 

 be second to none in Maine, and hence it is one all farmers should 

 regard as of the highest moment. 



The Jersey and Ayrshire cows have been acknowledged for the 

 past hundred years as the leading dairy cows — the former for but- 

 ter, the latter for cheese. In this age of cheese factories, while 



