LECTUKES AND ESSAYS READ AT INSTITUTES. 273 



ment iu cattle products. Good farmers can have no jealousy toward the 

 growth and increase of wealth of the cities, for it will bring to them better 

 prices for better products, and the demand is likely to exceed the supply, for 

 the best. 



In the first place the question is asked: "What is improvement?" "We 

 breed and feed cattle as we do other stock, primarily for the money they 

 bring. It is also a necessity laid upon us by our system of farming, that we 

 keep stock of some kind to consume the coarser, unsalable portion of the farm 

 products, and in that way turn them into money, and there is no stock that 

 "will consume the very coarsest forage to better advantage than cattle. 



In a system of improved farming, stock must be kept, and all the forage 

 and coarse grains marketed by feeding, that we may restore to the soil all the 

 elements of fertility that we possibly can to supply the place of that carried 

 away by constant cropping. We keep cattle mainly for the profit they bring 

 iu these several ways. It would of course be almost impossible for us to live 

 as we do without their aid, but of these necessities and uses it is not necessary 

 at this time to speak. 



There are perhaps some who enter the business of breeding cattle for the 

 ''beauty of the thing." These are men of means who breed fine stock as a 

 pastime, and amuse themselves as well as the public, by their endeavors to 

 improve their cattle in some point of color of hair, or shape of horn, or in 

 pride of ancestry, and neglecting the weightier matters of beef and milk, the 

 substantial products which the average farmer must have to make the keeping 

 of his cattle profitable. 



I would not disparage the breeding of beautiful animals. I do believe that 

 the man who is an improver of stock, by breeding in such a manner as to 

 change and elevate their character, and make it permanent, requires the 

 patience and skill of a great artist, and the heads and hands that have, by 

 skill in selecting, judgment in crossing, and care in feeding, produced some of 

 the individual specimens of our improved breeds of cattle, are worthy of a 

 place beside the great masters in art. 



The great reason for improving our cattle is to make them more profitable, 

 that they may produce more beef, more milk and butter, at less expense, and, 

 therefore, at a greater profit. If high-bred cattle do not do this, they fail of 

 their mission ; they have been bred for beauty at the expense of utility, and 

 there is no real improvement, because no real value has been added, and 

 though the breeder may realize fancy prices, the improvement will be a show 

 and not a reality, simply a gratification to the eye, and no addition to the 

 wealth of the country. 



There are breeders of cattle who have done this in a measure, and having 

 an eye only to the esthetics of stock breeding, have let go many points of 

 value that cannot be spared from cattle for every-day use. The best improve- 

 ment will be in the greatest adaptation to the uses we have for them — some 

 only for beef, some for both beef and milk, some for milk alone, but rich in 

 the elements for making cheese, and others for milk rich in butter of choice 

 flavor, like the "golden prints" from the best Jerseys. It is my opinion, 

 however, that the cattle that shall come nearest the mark for the improved 

 farms of Michigan, will be those that most fully combine all the qualities of 

 beef, milk, butter, and cheese. 



How is improvement to be made? There have been cattle on the earth, we 

 are told, for six thousand years, but so far as we positively know, but little 



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