NEAT STOCK. 185 



— this may be a very comfortal)le reflection, Ijiit the farmer who 

 purchases stock indiscriminately, without a knowledge of the 

 pedigree, stands a very fair chance of having bought — some 

 tenth transmitter of a rotten race. 



It should be borne in mind that morbid affection is not uni- 

 form in the time of its development, any more than is personal 

 resemblance ; it is frequently latent and inert for one or more 

 generations ; but, although it has these periodical slumbers, it 

 always awakes, and perhaps, like a giant refreshed with sleep, 

 only to reappear in a more malignant phase. It is with blood 

 as it is with gold ; — if you have some of the latter twenty-two 

 carats fine, with two of alloy, you may fuse and transfuse from 

 crucible to crucible, but you cannot transmute the baser material 

 into gold. The fact is, the peculiarities of an ancestor may be 

 developed sooner or later, and therefore, there is no certainty 

 but that the offspring of a very valuable animal, whose pedigree 

 is unknown, may be worthless. 



Your committee are fully convinced that the wisest plan is to 

 seek for animals of pure blood on both sides, for, to adopt the 

 language of our honorable president, when he was chairman of 

 this committee in 1851 : — " In a long course of breeding, in a 

 direct line, no intelligent breeder will resist the conclusion, 

 whether it be in cattle, horses, sheep or swine, that the charac- 

 teristics of the sires and dams will be imparted to their pro- 

 geny ;" but he adds, "breeding from close affinities should be 

 avoided, for the result of it must be impaired constitutions." 

 When, however, this cannot be attained, your committee say, 

 by all means let a full blooded sire of one of the best breeds be 

 used, in order to obtain the most valuable cross. 



President D wight, in his travels in New England, mentionf< 

 that the town of Durham, in the State of Connecticut, had been 

 distinguished many years for a very fine breed of cattle. Two 

 ox^n presented by some of the inhabitants to General Washing- 

 ton, furnished a dinner for all the officers of the American 

 army at Valley Forge, and all their servants. These oxen were 

 driven almost five hundred miles, through a country nearly ex- 

 hausted of its forage, yet one of them, a steer, five years 

 old, weighed two thousand two hundred and seventy pounds. 

 Brave men lived before Agamemnon ; and it appears they had 

 good steers in those days. Well, gentlemen, the coincidence in 



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