FEEDING AND BREEDING. 93 



Now, all these classes of animals to which I have alluded, 

 some of which are not adapted to New England and some of 

 which arc, it is profitable to breed here, if the New England 

 farmers will apply themselves to the business of breeding, as the 

 English and Scotch farmers apply themselves to breeding the 

 best animals they can conceive of on the island of Great Britain. 

 Breed them for the purpose of producing the best animal ; the 

 market is always open to them, and there is no limit in this 

 country to the demand for good Ayrshires, or good Shorthorns, 

 or good Jerseys, scarce as they are, or good merino sheep, or 

 good horses ; so that cattle husbandry in New England is really, 

 when carried on in its most improved way, cattle breeding. Of 

 course, the feeding of animals goes with it, because you cannot 

 breed well unless you feed well. A part of the great business 

 of the improvement of any animals is the mode of feeding from 

 day to day, generation after generation ; but breeding is the 

 business out of which the New England farmer can make his 

 profits. Then, when the long, cold winter comes, he need not 

 be disturbed for fear that the cattle he is feeding in his stalls 

 will not pay him in the spring, because he knows perfectly well 

 that every pound he puts upon them will be more than paid for, 

 not by their value, pound for pound, but by their quality as 

 breeding animals. 



Now, this has brought me to the point upon which this debate 

 was opened. There is no question that the whole business of 

 breeding is one which requires the utmost care, the keenest and 

 acutest observation, and a sort of instinctive knowledge of the 

 whole physique and morale of the animal — an intimate acquaint- 

 ance, a sort of secret association, which no man can get who 

 does not devote himself to the business and sharpen his mind 

 for the work before him. You all know that under adverse 

 circumstances — starvation accompanied with cold and ignorance 

 — the human race will degenerate as rapidly as any of the field 

 products of the farm will degenerate under bad cultivation. 

 That is evident enough. So that there are unquestionably fam- 

 ilies of men — I will not say races, but families of men — almost 

 nations of men, who, under adverse circumstances, social, civil, 

 national, have degenerated, until at last they have reached a 

 point which is below that of a sharp, quick, clear, intelligent 

 savage. The downfall of the human race from a point of civili- 



