262 STATE BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. 



dinary merit, a careful study of the principles of the art, which are easily 

 understood, will enable one to make the improvements necessary to his profits. 

 As milk is one of the definite qualities to be attained in the art of breeding, 

 let us briefly turn the pages of history and glance at some of the records before 

 we touch upon line breeding. Mr. AVestell had a cow called "Barforth," that 

 gave 18 quarts each milking; Mr. Houstler's Daisy cow gave .16 quarts; 

 Duchess, by Daisy bull, gave 14 quarts, and each quart, when set up separately 

 and churned, gave 1^ ounces, or 21 ounces to a milking. Brighteyes, owned 

 by R. Colling, gave 15 quarts twice a day. The Princess, bred by John 

 Stevenson, are good milkers; among the Princess' heifers imported in 1849 by 

 Stevens and Sherwood, of New York, was Red Rose 4th. This heifer, when 

 four years old, made 03 pounds of butter in June, and 45 pounds in August, 

 on grass feed alone. S. P. Chapman had cows that made 2^ pounds of butter 

 a day. In 1870, Brighteyes 7th, by Apricot's Gloster (2,500), calved February 

 6th, and during the last days of November and first days of December made 

 7 pounds of butter in a week, and that from what she picked in the field. 

 Mr. Somerville's cow, Honeysuckle, recorded in Volume xii, American Herd- 

 book, was fed in the barn, and besides suckling a pair of twin calves, gave a 

 common pail of milk twice a day for quite a time. We have known good 

 milkers of nearly every tribe and family, and the difficulty really is to find 

 Short-horns which will not milk if rationally treated. 



What constitutes line breeding, or breeding in a line? It is breeding from 

 similar blood, quality, and form, so as to continue uniformity in the offspring. 

 It may also be expressed as referring to the selection of males of a common 

 type, and belonging to the same family. Thomas Bates was one of the first 

 followers of line breeding, and pursued the same in regard to all the families 

 in his herd. In the breeding of his principal family, the Duchess, from 1804 

 until his death, or during a period of 45 years, he used very few out crosses. 

 The first was 2d Hubback (1,423) in 1824, an animal bearing very close 

 resemblance to Hubback (319), and having the same foundation as the Stan- 

 wick cow. When Mr. Bates procured his next cross, Belvedere (1,706), a 

 Princess, and also tracing back to the same foundation, he told his acquaint- 

 ances that by the union of the Duchess and Princess blood, he would produce 

 such Short-horns as had never before appeared. This proved true, for by the 

 second cross he got Duke of Northumberland, an animal for which he refused 

 4,000 guineas. This is more than any one animal had ever sold for up to the 

 time of the New York Mills sale, and even then the highest prices realized 

 were for their descendants. The next crossing was through the Matchem cow, 

 the foundation of the Oxfords, and though having no written pedigrees, it was 

 used with confidence, as it was one of the best animals in the herd of Mr. 

 Brown, and he had been a breeder of Short-horns for half a century. After 

 this he used principally Dukes or Oxfords during his" life. When Earl Ducie 

 purchased Duchess 55, he said he would cross her with Usurer (9,763), and 

 improve her shoulders. He did so, but when he saw the calf, said to his 

 friend Strafford: "Bates is right, and I am wrong. I will never cross them 

 again with anything save themselves, viz. : Dukes and Oxfords." 



Those families that are bred in a line are those most sought after, on 

 account of the produce being uniformly good. Various examples could be 

 given from the herds of Morris, Thorne, Slieldon, Alexander, and others, that 

 have bred many of the noted families of the Short-horns of the day. The 

 Wildeyes, Barrington, Kirk Leaviugton, Princess, Rose of Sharon, Peri, 



