120 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. 



will best be met by a kind of cattle, which, without possessing 

 remarkable excellence in any one direction, shall be sufficiently 

 hardy for our changeable and severe climate, the oxen proving 

 docile and efficient laborers for a while, and then turn quickly into 

 good beef upon such food as their farms will produce, the cows 

 giving a fair quantity and quality of milk for the needs of the family 

 and perhaps to furnish a little butter and cheese for market. 



Before proceeding to answer the inquiry more definitely, it may 

 be well to remark further, that among the facts of experience re- 

 garding cattle, sheep and horses, nothing is better established than 

 that no breed can be transferred from the place where it originated, 

 and to which it was suited, to another of unlike surface, climate 

 and fertility, and retain equal adaptation to its new situation, nor 

 can it continue to be what it was before. It must and will vary. 

 The influence of climate alone, aside from food and other agencies 

 in causing variation, is so great that the utmost skill in breeding, 

 and care in all other respects, cannot wholly control its modifying 

 effects. 



It is also pretty well established that no breed brought in from 

 abroad can be fully as good, other things being equal, as one indige- 

 nous to the locality, or what approximates the same thing, as one, 

 which by being reared through repeated generations on the spot 

 has become thoroughly acclimated ; so that the presumption is 

 strongly in favor of natives. 



When we look about us however, we find, if we except the 

 Morgan horses, nothing which deserves the ntime of indigenous 

 breeds or races. The cattle and gheep known as "natives" are of 

 mixed foreign origin, and have been bred with no care in selection, 

 but crossed up in every possible way. They possess no fixed 

 hereditary traits, and although among them are many of very re- 

 8pectal)le <[ualities, and which possess desirable characteristics, they 

 cannot be relied upon as breeders, to produce progeny of like excel- 

 lence. Instead of constancy, there is continual variation, and fre- 

 quent " breeding back," exhibiting the undesirable traits of inferior 

 ancestors. That a breed might be established from them, by care- 

 ful selection continued during repeated generations, aided perhaps 

 by judicious crossing with more recent importations, fully as good 

 as any now existing, is not to be doubted. Very probably, a breed 

 for dairy purposes might be thus created which should excel any 

 now existing in Europe, for some of our so called native cows, care- 

 lessly as they have been bred, are not surpassed by any of foreign 



