STOCK. 277 



to the plough, or drained into the pail, th's consequential air 

 dwindled into insignificance. 



I have witnessed not less than forty ploughing matches, with 

 an average of twenty ox-teams in each; but I do not remember 

 a single instance where any superiority of power was mani- 

 fested in their operations, by the imported over the native 

 cattle. If they possess the power, would it not have been 

 made apparent under such circumstances ? I have known 

 attempts to exclude expert ploughmen from holding the plough, 

 but I never knew of any attempt to exclude expert oxen from 

 drawing it, and if I had, I query whether the slow moulded 

 Durhams would have been thus privileged. I have seen the 

 massive Durhams, the descendants of the far famed Denton, of 

 Northborough, moving in the ploughing field, side by side with 

 the snug-built, bright-eyed native ox from Sutton — a little more 

 than half as large — and was constrained to say, that the work 

 was quite as well done by the latter as the former. If you 

 were about to select your man for promptness and expertness 

 of labor, would you take the largest to be found ? By no 

 means. I have seen the snug-built little man, weighing not over 

 one hundred and sixty pounds, who would lay on his back the 

 largest lubber that come along. The same rule applies to oxen 

 for labor. 



Our milch cows, for the making of butter and cheese, the . 

 primary object for which they are kept on most farms, are cer- 

 tainly not inferior to any others. In expressing this opinion, 

 I take into view their feed as well as their products. I have 

 seen many cows within thirty years, and the very best I have 

 seen have been native. Such was the opinion of Timothy 

 Pickering and John Lowell, gentlemen of as discriminating 

 observation and high character for intelligence and truth as 

 any others. Not speculators in stock — with no prejudices to 

 conquer, or preferences to award. That I may not do injustice 

 to these venerable pioneers in improvements, who did more in 

 Massachusetts to awaken public attention to the interests of 

 the farmer than all others, I beg leave to quote a single sen- 

 tence from a report submitted by Mr. Lowell, on milch cows, 

 exhibited at the show in Brighton, October, 1822, when Mr. 



