90 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. 



not profitable to sell, and so easily got to market that is is worth 

 almost as much (not quite, it is true,) in the barn of any farmer 

 as when brought into market. Hay in Maine and Western Massa- 

 chusetts is not worth $35 or $40 a ton ; but it is worth so much 

 as to make it more profitable to sell it than feed it ; so that the 

 business of cattle husbandry is made an expensive business, not 

 a cheap business, here ; and were it not that the animal produces 

 all that vitalizes and fertilizes the farm, no man, except for his 

 own personal family use, would ever think of keeping a cow or 

 an ox. That is. one of the luxuries ; it is a part of the aesthetics 

 of farming ; it is a thing the farmer likes ; but so far as the 

 making of money from cattle produced for the general purposes 

 of the market is concerned, there is no profit in it. You can 

 raise fine animals here — good cows for the dairy ; and when you 

 are breeding any cow for the dairy, it is a good plan to breed a 

 cow for that purpose combining some other qualities that will 

 make her useful for the shambles when her business of the dairy 

 is over. But she must be so organized that she will produce 

 a substance for the market from her own system that will pay 

 for what she consumes better than the production of beef would 

 pay. The dairy does that. But there is a higher business still 

 for the New England farmer, and that is the production of 

 choice animals for the improvement of the breeds of animals in 

 other sections of the country. That is a business to which the 

 New England farmer can apply himself with great care and great 

 profit, and to which lfe has applied himself with great success. I 

 will illustrate. There have been bred in New England, in a 

 climate not particularly adapted to the development of Short- 

 horns, for instance, some of the best breeding animals of the 

 Shorthorn variety or kind that can possibly be conceived of; 

 animals better than you generally find in Kentucky ; animals as 

 good as the best importers — Mr. Thorne, Colonel Morris, and 

 others — have ever imported or ever bred in their stables ; and 

 the profit of those animals in times past has been twofold. One 

 was, when hay and grain were cheaper, the production of fine 

 working oxen and large-sized cows in some of our rich pastures, 

 like some of the hills of Berkshire, portions of Worcester 

 County and the Connecticut Valley ; and the other was the pro- 

 duction of good animals to send into regions better adapted to 

 their use. Now the New England farmer can do that to perfee- 



