286 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. 



ture, no one need doubt ; nor is there any reason why, with 

 proper selection, feeding and care, the average value of cattle 

 here, of cows at least, should not be brought up to that of States 

 considered more fortunate in soil and climate. A cow here should 

 be worth as much as a cow in New York ; I mean a source of as 

 much profit to the owner. 



I have presented these few thoughts to you not with any hope 

 of exhausting the subject, but in order to impress upon your minds 

 the importance and interest of the subject, and to introduce you 

 to one of the most pleasing and profitable branches of agriculture. 

 I need not tell you how we all depend upon the dumb creatures 

 which wait upon us during life, and at their death feed and clothe 

 us. From valley and hill, from prairie and mountain, they come 

 flocking in, the patient servants of an imperious master. They 

 ofier themselves a living sacrifice to the majesty of civilized man. 

 Buffering as he yields to povery and hardship and barbarism, and 

 rising with him as he rises, into his conditions of luxury and ease, 

 and economy and fitness of purpose. The great community of 

 cattle I Who shall write its history ? How it has been controlled 

 by the laws which make the world what it is — how it enables the 

 great community of man to dwell here on the face of the eai'th — 

 how it stands the pedestal on which a nobler fabric rests — how its 

 condition tells the tale of races higher in the scale of being. That 

 strange and mysterious relation between man and animals, every- 

 where recognized, everywhere felt — that mutual dependence each 

 upon the other — that intelligent appropriation and cultivation on 

 the one hand, that unconscious and entire obedience and submis" 

 sion of all the great vital forces on the other — who can tell it all ? 

 And superior as we may be, powerful, controlling and independent, 

 can any man contemplate the magnitude of the change were the 

 sovereignty of this great community of cattle to be asserted and 

 man'^ dominion be suddenly broken ? From the feeding of armies 

 and the sustaining of the busy throng who fill our places of power 

 and trust, down to the nourishing drop which supports the feeble 

 child in its first grasp on life, it is the domestic animal which 

 hears one long and constant human appeal, and never hesitates in 

 its devoted and self-sacrificing reply. In parks, in meadows, 

 before the cottage door, with an entire and unresisting submission 

 to circumstances, there come to man from his dumb ally, food and 

 raiment, and an unceasing claim upon his skill and his humanity. 

 It is the animal kingdom which forms one of the liveliest charms 



