VERMONT DAIRYMEN'S ASSOCIATION. 117 



of different shapes. Temperament comes first, function next, 

 and function decides the form. Whoever heard of a general 

 ourpose mowing - machine, or sewing" machine ; whoever heard 

 of a general purpose machine of any kind ? And the reason 

 we get so low results in dairying is that farmers have .been 

 breeding general purpose cattle, and they have got 125 pound 

 cows and 150 pound cows. Here and there among these cows 

 a man may find a very good animal, but the heredity is such 

 that when you attempt to breed her you will find a disposi- 

 tion to put on flesh when you want butter fat. 



A man in my town put a Short-horn sire at the head of a 

 herd of cows which made from 250 to 275 pounds of butter 

 apiece and in about eight years he had run down from 250 

 pounds to the cow to 165 pounds, and the man sorrowed and 

 said, " these years have I wasted." And he prayed " forgive 

 me oh Lord, for my ignorance of thv laws." By his side was 

 another man who had a herd of grade Short-horn cows and he 

 said, ' I cannot make my cows produce over 150 pounds of 

 butter per cow ; what would you advise? " I replied I would 

 advise you to put the finest Jersey bull at the head of your 

 herd that you can find, take the best of those daughters and 

 bred back to the sire." He was surprised and said, "breed 

 them back to the sire?'' I said, "certainly; there is no 

 harm in inbreeding cattle to a certain extent ; with men it is 

 different. Cattle have not taken on way back certain unnama- 

 able diseases. Hahneman, the great German physician, states 

 that modern scrofula is ancient syphilis, so you see that in- 

 breeding with men, it does not mean the same as with cattle." 

 I said " breed back the daughter to the sire ; you have the 

 sire in the grand-daughter twice, and the daughter only 

 once." What was the result ? The grand-mothers made but 

 150 pounds of butter ; the grand-daughters made 327 pounds 

 of butter. That was all in the line of my observation, and 

 shows the effect of intelligent breeding and comprehension of 

 the laws of heredity upon that man's fortune, and I say you 

 may verify this in every direction. 



Now I will go through this rapidly, I want to speak of two 

 things, and I will try and confine myself to those two things. 

 You see this animal is of peculiar shape. I will speak of 

 Constitution. Right at the naval is the place I study the con- 

 stitution of the animal. We must have constitution in our 

 dairy cattle. What is constitution? It is the ability to stand 

 up and endure. Constitution is not capacity. You have any 

 number of cows with large capacity who cannot endure their 

 work, you have a number of fast horses who cannot stay on 

 the track and endure their work. I first got on to this idea by 

 seeing an English army surgeon in the Civil war examine a 



