96 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. 



qualities as some other breeds. Yet we have some remark- 

 able accounts of their products and excellency in this line, 

 among some of the first importations. We have the report 

 of E. P. Prentice of Mount Hope, of a heifer, only seventeen 

 months and three days old, that weighed five hundred and 

 fifty pounds, producing during the last week in May, 1854, 

 nine pounds and three-quarters of butter. My experience 

 with them would not warrant me in making so favorable a 

 report, so far as butter is concerned. 



The Channel Island cattle embrace the Alderneys, Jerseys, 

 and Guernseys. You are all familiar with their attractive 

 faces. For color and quantity of cream, and the facility with 

 which it is manufactured into butter, they lead the list, and 

 are, on this account, especially popular. But they have been 

 too closely bred, and are, therefore, too delicate and effemi- 

 nate for the ordinary practical farmer, while they are, per- 

 haps, of all our blood cattle, the largest eaters as compared 

 with what they produce. For many purposes they do not 

 equal some other breeds. Thomas Motley of Jamaica Plain 

 reports one of his cows as yielding five hundred and eleven 

 pounds and three-quarters of butter from the eleventh day 

 of May, 1853, to the twenty-sixth day of April, 1854. The 

 last three months it took five quarts of milk for one 

 pound of butter. 



THE SHORT-HOKNS. 



These valuable and noted cattle have been practically 

 known to us for many years. They are celebrated all over 

 the country for their large size and symmetrical beauty, and 

 for the fabulous prices they have brought. There was a 

 heifer calf of this breed sold in 1875 for twenty-seven thou- 

 sand dollars, — more valuable, indeed, than the golden calf 

 which Aaron set up for Israel to worship. It was the high- 

 est price ever paid for a year-old creature in all beastdom. 

 This calfs mother and her progeny sold for over a hundred 

 thousand dollars. Unfortunately they have not been bred so 

 much for milk of late as formerly. There was a time when 

 they stood in the first rank for dairy use : I am not certain but 

 their constitution while thus bred was becoming impaired. 

 If so, the evil has been remedied by an infusion of new blood 

 from a branch of the family more recently imported. Their 



