266 ANNUAL REPORT OF THE Off. Doc. 



THE JERSEY COW. 



By K. H. SIBLKY, President of the Pennsylvania Cattle Vluh. 



Did the Jersey breed originate, as some have supposed, by the 

 union of the deer and the cow in some dim, musty epoch in the morn- 

 ing-time of the world? Unfortunately, this is one of the ques- 

 tions to which no positive answer can ever be vouchsafed; for in 

 that remote period, no historian was present to record the facts' 

 for a curious and interested public at the close of the nineteenth 

 century of the Christian era. 



The supposition, however, is a most natural one. The fine, taper- 

 ing head, the open nostrils, the full liquid eyes, the symmetrical 

 shape, the graceful carriage, the mild disposition, the soft hair and 

 the delicate shadings of fawn of the coat are all both noteworthy 

 and suggestive characteristics. 



If we leave, now, the realm of uncertainty and conjecture, and 

 enter the domain of events duly chronicled, we find that as early 

 as 1789 these cattle were so highly esteemed in their native home on 

 the Island of Jersey that an act of the local legislature was passed 

 which prohibited the importation of all foreign bred cattle, and 

 imposed heavy fines on all connected with such a transaction, and 

 provided, furthermore, for the slaughter of animals that had in this 

 way reached the Island, and went even to the length of decreeing 

 the forfeiture of the vessel itself which had brought them thither. 



The reason why the Islanders were so anxious to preserve their 

 cattle from being mixed with other breeds was, that the Jerseys were 

 superior to all others as dairy animals. If we search for the causes 

 of this superiority, they may be difficult to ascertain. Many great 

 results proceed from causes so numerous, so subtle and of such pe- 

 culiar combination that the faithful analyst, after many attempts, 

 confesses the vagueness and the inadequacy of the constituent fac- 

 tors he has arrived at. 



It will be generally conceded that the white race is superior to 

 the black, the yellow or the red; yet the white race has reared 

 some of the grandest triumphs of civilization in the same latitude, 

 the same elevation and in the same lands from which they have ex- 

 pelled the native inhabitants, who had utilized practically none of 

 nature's boundless resources. So, while I shall mention a few of 



