EESEMBLES AX AYRSHIRE. 171 



But when yoii are asked, how much your milk costs in the 

 general run, you cannot select cow after cow and estimate 

 properly. The only law you can possibly adopt is the one I 

 have hiid down here : Select that animal which, on the smallest 

 amount of food, will produce the largest amount of milk. That 

 is the law which lies at the basis of cattle husbandry. 



Now, in order to attend to this properly, we must learn 

 our lesson from those people who have accomplished the 

 object. I am perfectly free to confess to you here, gentle- 

 men, that I have adopted, bred, fed and used what are usually 

 called Ayrshire qpws for nearly twenty years. I began early to 

 import them and encourage their importation into this country, 

 into this State, especially ; and I have often found that when- 

 ever I have discovered in a herd of coarse, heavy cattle, a 

 cow that was particularly profitable, I have been told "she 

 resembles an Ayrshire." I wish that Mr. Holland, of Barre, 

 were here, that I might call him up to testify to the vast service 

 that he performed to his own herd by the introduction of an 

 Ayrshire bull twelve years ago, to reduce the size and con- 

 solidate the forms of his cattle ; and I would say to him, that 

 the half-dozen grade calves, Ayrshire and Durham, that had 

 been bred in that way, which I purchased of him in 1869, 

 were half a dozen of the best cows I ever had in my dairy 

 herd. They had the loose texture of the old-fashioned Dur- 

 ham, and they had the compact form, the level hip, the fine 

 shoulder, the flat rib, the admirable strong head, the wide 

 mouth, capable of taking in food with great rapidity, the com- 

 pact stomach, the great milk-veins, and all the characteristics 

 which go to make up a first-class dairy cow. Every one of 

 them had these indications of a good milking animal, and they 

 have gone on from that time to this, doing their dut}^ in my 

 herd faithfully and profitably. I say, therefore, I am not an 

 advocate of this class of animals because they are Ayrshires, 

 or because they grow in Scotland, or because they are on my 

 own farm, but because they answer the great rule which I 

 have laid down for the best dairv cow. These calves that I 

 purchased were grades, created by an Ayrshire bull upon a 

 broad, coarse-hipped Durham cow. I call it the Durham cow 

 of Barre, because the dairy cows of Worcester County are not 

 the modern improved Shorthorns ; they are the old-fashioned 



