160 BOARD OF AGRICULTUEE. 



of which is well authenticated, that gradually a collection may 

 be made which will furnish the means of discoverino; what are 

 the relations of the joints, the length of the bones, the solidity 

 of the bones, and their dimensions, which characterize one 

 breed from another. For instance, everybody knows a dray- 

 horse from a through-bred by sight, but I do not know that 

 there is any anatomical statement giving the dimensions by 

 which the differences can be appreciated numerically, as they 

 should be, and when we inquire into the hereditary capacity of 

 one breed as compared with another, as we consider the 

 increase of capacity to transmit the qualities from one to 

 another, we have no standard ; it is only a general impression ; 

 it is the recollection of what we have seen in one case with the ' 

 recollection of what we have seen in another case. We should 

 have something more tangible than that. If we had a solitary 

 skeleton of the first imported animals of the breeds which we 

 raise in this Commonwealth, which we could compare with 

 their progeny, we should have something of real use. I think 

 nothing would be more useful in coming generations than to 

 have a collection of a succession of generations of any one 

 breed, or, if it is possible, of all. Suppose any gentleman who 

 raises Ayrshires with success now, would begin to preserve 

 the carcases of every one of the animals which dies on his 

 farm, and generation after generation preserve these carcases, 

 by making them into good skeletons, in fifty years there would 

 be a collection of a hundred carcases, which could be com- 

 pared with one another. And do not think that two or three 

 liundred skeletons of one and the same breed will be any too 

 many, in order to make the kind of investigation which will 

 give us a standard. An average is not obtained by observing 

 a few dozen individuals ; we must count the cases by hundreds, 

 if possible, by thousands, before we can have anything that 

 can be considered reliable. 



Now, the museum in Cambridge is organized upon such a 

 footing, that we are Ijeginning to make collections for the 

 school, in order to prepare materials for future investigation. 

 As I cannot buy horses by the hundred and slaughter them 

 to make skeletons, I make my preparatory investigations 

 upon specimens Avhich are not costly. The only species of 

 vertebrate animals of which I have more than one hundred 



