206 MASSACHUSETTS AGRICULTURE. 



Hon. John Brooks. These animals were the attraction and 

 admiration of all. For neatness of limb, compactness and sym- 

 metry of form and proportion, they are hardly to be excelled. 

 These are the first specimens of the race ever seen at our shows. 

 What their milking properties may be is not known, here. The 

 Rural Cyclopasdia, an English work of acknowledged authority, 

 contains the remark, that " they pay the feeder better than the 

 breeder, for their cows are very bad milkers, while their oxen 

 and heifers, when in good condition, are exceedingly well 

 adapted to the shambles. They have their beef well developed 

 in the best points, and though a heavy breed, they generally sell 

 at first rate prices, in Smithfield. They seem well adapted, in 

 form and strengtli,forheavy farm work; but they want sufficient 

 activity, and are now seldom seen in the yoke." And Martin, 

 a British writer of much celebrity, in a treatise on the ox, says 

 of the Hereford, " as milkers they are inferior to the Devons, 

 but acquire an earlier maturity, and fatten both more rapidly 

 and to a greater weight." Whether, with these imputed char- 

 acteristics on their native soil, they will be any improvement to 

 the stock of New England, remains to be determined by experi- 

 ence. Such accounts of them should, at least, lead to some 

 degree of caution in their very free introduction. Beautiful as 

 they appear, certainly, a comniittee on milch cows should be 

 slow to recommend them for the dairy. 



The president likewise gratuitously presented a noble looking 

 Ayrshire cow from the former stock of that eminent agricul- 

 turist, the late Mr. Webster ; also a three-fourths blood Ayr- 

 shire heifer, four years old, of his own raising. There were 

 other varieties of his stock on exhibition which bore testimony 

 to his success as a skilful breeder. 



To the Hon. Stephen Salisbury, one of our trustees, the society 

 are renewedly indebted for the exhibition of his entire family of 

 pure Jersey cattle. His cows have much improved, under his 

 care, in external appearance, since their importation, two years 

 ago. It is greatly to be regretted that this enlightened and 

 devoted friend to agricultural enterprise and improvement was 

 not enabled, through the attention of his tenant, to present to 

 us a particular and extended account of his experience of the 

 product and value of this stock of undoubted blood. 



Mr. Paine Aldrich, of Worcester, with most commendable 



