No. 7. DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE. 269 



fessors, and by those who could not write a single page of manu- 

 script without misspelling one or more of the words employed. In 

 short, so pronounced were the merits of Jersey cows as rich milkers, 

 and hence as heavy butter makers, that their merits were recognized 

 by their owners at once, if these owners were possessed of an ordi- 

 nary degree of the qualities of perception and intelligence. 



The American Jersey Cattle Club has accepted, approximately, 

 4,200 tests of cows making upwards of 14 pounds of butter a week. 

 On an average, one cow in every nine tested makes 20 pounds or 

 more, and one in every sixty-one makes 25 pounds or more, while 

 one out of every 179 tests, 28 pounds or over. In connection with 

 the tests accepted by the club, it should be borne in mind that the 

 blanks furnished for the purpose, require more than forty different 

 details for each cow tested. In those cases in which an employe 

 makes the test, an affidavit is required before a justice of the peace 

 or a notary public, and the owner must certify that he has full con- 

 fidence in the statement made by his representative. To supply 

 all the points of information demanded b3^the Club, makes the prep- 

 aration of the paper a burdensome task to many people. It would 

 seem to the writer a conservative estimate that not over two-thirds 

 of the number of tests actually made have ever been reported on the 

 blanks formulated by the Club. Many people, moreover, have 

 churned separately the milk of a Jers'ey cow for, say six days, five 

 days, four days, or three days; and finding that the cow made during 

 this period from two pounds to three pounds or more of butter a 

 day, they have been just as well satisfied as to the capacity of their 

 cow as though they had continued the test for seven days; yet no 

 record of any test is accepted by the Club for less than a full week. 

 It is not by any means unlikely that at least one-fourth, and perhaps 

 one-half, as many more Jerseys have shown for a shorter period 

 than that fixed by the Club as the basis of publication, a capacity 

 for butter of two or more pounds a day. For every case of an au- 

 thenticated butter test of over 14 pounds a week by the churn in 

 any other breed of cattle, the claim would surely be far within the 

 bounds of accuracy that there w^ere ten such butter tests of Jersey 

 cows. 



But fortunately for the sake of establishing the supremacy of 

 the Jersey as a dairy and family cow, we are not compelled to rely 

 upon the statements of owners or partisans. At the World's Fair 

 in 1893 there was a contest of breeds, under rules and conditions 

 which had been the subject of consideration and which had been in 

 the process of formation for nearly a year and a half previous to 

 adoption. The meetings for the purpose of determining these rules 

 were called by Hon. W. I. Buchanan, Chief of the Department of 

 Agriculture of the World's Columbian Exposition. The following 



