282 MASSACHUSETTS AGRICULTURE. 



eraging not less than $75 an animal. On inquiry of his herdsman 

 which was the best cow for milk in the yard, (and there were a 

 dozen or more there,) the answer was, " that dark-colored, 

 crumpled horn, raw-boned, ill-looking cow ; she gives more and 

 better milk than any cow in the yard." After what I have 

 said, it is perhaps, unnecessary for me to say she was a native. 

 I appeal to farmers whether they have not witnessed some- 

 thim'- of the same kind in their own herds. He that selects an 

 animal for milk because her form is comely, or her face beauti- 

 ful, is in great danger of being deceived in his choice. There 

 are other indices of quality much more certain, not omitting the 

 far-famed escutcheon index of Guenon — of which I have heard 

 much and know little — but what I do know is decidedly in its 

 favor. No man who would have a good dairy stock should be 

 unmindful of this sign. 



On a recent visit to the farm of Mr. Payson, of Rowley, he 

 informed me that within ten years last past he had examined 

 and carefully tested the qualities of more than one thousand 

 milch cows, of every name and variety, and he frankly stated, 

 that the best milkers he had ever met, take them individually 

 or as a class, came from the droves gathered in Maine or New 

 Hampshire. In selecting these animals he had regard to their 

 external characteristics mainly, their form, their build, their gen- 

 eral expression, such as an experienced eye embraces, although 

 there may be no word to give it. Said Mr. Payson : " When 

 the merits of imported animals have been blazoned abroad, and 

 the defects of native carefully exaggerated, I have sometimes 

 thought that the sin of the owner was laid at the door of the 

 brute beast. No matter by what name your cattle are known, 

 or how complicated may be their pedigree, so long as they 

 are not well fed and cared for, they will be no better than the 

 ill-formed native stock, which, in many places, like the lean kine 

 of Pharoah, seem to be 'forsaken of God and abused by man.'" 

 At the same time, as I passed through his extended barns, I 

 saw a young Jersey bull, recently obtained of Mr. Motley, from 

 the Massachusetts importation, at a cost proportioned to his 

 reputation, carefully boxed up in the barn, and fed on the best 

 that could be furnished ; while natives of the same age were 

 gnawing the parched herbage on gravelly knolls, with no one 



