302 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. 



are bred anywhere else in the -world, without a constant recourse to the 

 herds of Great Britain, we will have to admit we are failures. 



Last winter in Washington I had a conversation with the Argentina 

 Minister. I was speaking to him of the possibility of getting some of 

 their quarantine regulations changed. He then aslied me why they should 

 come to us for cattle when we go constantly to Scotland for ours. That 

 is the position they talie. "Who bloweth not his own horn, his horn shall 

 not be blown." That is the common sense of it. Let us blow our own 

 horn! Native cattle that have been on this soil for seventy-five years have 

 not deteriorated. While we may desire new blood and may desire to 

 change the type, as we did in the eighties, having done that we ought 

 to stand up before the world and say we can maintain what we have 

 achieved. 



No one talks about the American man deteriorating, although I believe 

 I did hear of one Englishman who said the American men were going 

 back to the type of the American Indian; that they were going back to 

 the long, lean, high-boned type. That may be so, but at any rate it can 

 not be said of our short-legged short-horn cattle. 



Short-horn cattle have followed the English-speaking people all over 

 the world. There is a humanity about short-horns that is lacking in other 

 breeds of cattle. An attachment exists between the man who owns short- 

 horns and his cattle that you do not find anywhere else. The Herefuids 

 and the Angus cattle are simply beasts— good ones, no doubt, under cer- 

 tain conditions and in certain localities— but the short-horn cattle are 

 members of the family. I never was chased out of a pasture by anything 

 except an Angus cow. There is a wildness about that bi'eed that does 

 not exist in short-horn cattle. These breeds do not answer the purpose 

 for general fai-mers' cows; they are not animals that can be handled by 

 the family. 



We have a very remarkable Secretary of our State Board of Agri- 

 culture in Kansas. He is fond of generalizations and of burrowing into 

 things. A year or two he tools *he records of the old fat stock show 

 in Chicago. That show was caiTied on for about fifteen years. All 

 classes of cattle were put in the final test. He took the statistics of that 

 great show, tabulated them, and arrived at some general conclusions I 

 think mean a great deal. Individual examples of maturity and such things 

 do not amount to much. He prepared tables for thirteen years. He took 

 all the Hereford, Angus, short-horn and other breeds between three and 

 four. The only two that ran at all alike in the display made and the 

 number shown were the Herefords and the short-horns. 



The three-year-old Herefords averaged in pounds 1.903, in days 1,271, 

 and showed a gain per day of 1.50 pounds. 



The short-horns averaged in pounds 2,115, in days 1.324, and showed a 

 gain per day of ].50 pounds, a gain of .00 per day more than the Hereforde. 



The next class was the two-year-olds. The Herefords averaged in 

 pounds 1.042; in days OJV;. and showed a gain per day of 1.0.") pounds. 



