412 
and variety. The cultivation of the finer varieties has arrested the attention of men 
‘ and women of taste, wealth, and refinement to such extent that the perfection of our 
poultry may even be classed among the fine arts of animated nature, and challenge com- 
petition with any portion of the universe. 
Least and last of the domestic creatures which engage our attention may be named 
a small insect, f 
THE HONEY-BEE. 
Time, long before and ever since the bee made its honey in the carcass of the dead 
lion slain by Sampson, has noted this useful insect in its companionship with man, 
as well as in its wild habitations in the wilderness, where climate and vegetation 
favored its propagation. It furnishes us the most luxuriant of sweets in its honey, and 
an important commodity in its wax. The aggregate annual commercial value of our 
bee-product is probably hundreds of thousands of dollars, being difficult to determine, 
from the want of current statistics; yet all who choose to investigate may be assured 
of their importance. Of bee literature, we have public journals devoted to their in- 
terest, many volumes of printed books, and divers essays in our agricultural periodicals ; 
and were I to relate the annals of my own personal companienship with them for many 
years past, I should only tell you that at the present day they are both as untamed and 
ancivilized as when the great patriarch, Noah. let them out of his ark to forage among 
the renewed plants and flowers at the foot of Mount Ararat. They live, propagate, and 
subsist by instinct alone, and not all the invention or ingenuity of man has been able 
te improve their qualities, to change their habits, or invite them to a companionable 
docility. Even the importation of the superior Italian bee into our country in late 
years, and crossing them on our common stock, has not perceptibly improved their 
habits. So, lovable as they may be in their sweets and wax, they are barbarians now, 
as ever, and equally at home in the hollow trunk of a tree in the wildest forest, as in 
their hives amid the flowers of the field, or the refinements of the mosy highly eviti- 
vated orchard and garden. 
Now, gentlemen, in all this long dissertation I have probably told you nothing new, 
and little which will prove instructive, or even worthy of publication. Yet we have 
seen that from the rudest material at the beginning of our agricultural settlements we 
have made decided progress in the breeding and cultivation of our domestic animals, 
and that chiefly within the last century. We find that much has thus far been ac- 
complished, and with the aids and lights now at our disposal, we trust a still more 
rapid and a more widely disseminated progress can be achieved in the future. 
The present value of all our varieties of domestic live stock in the United States and 
its territories may be safely estimated at two thousand millions of dollars, and their 
annual product of all kinds at one thousand millions more. Full 30 per cent. has 
been added to the aggregate per capita value of our graded stock by improvements in 
their breeding within the last fifty years, and at no increased cost in their keeping, al- 
though those improved animals as yet extend over only a fractional part of our coun- 
try. What then may be the increased measure of value when—if such a thing be pos- 
sible—that improvement shall embrace the farm-stock of our entire broad nationality ? 
Kk must be almost incalculable. 
In review of this live-stock history and progress which has been considered, I wish 
here to note, and with somewhat of emphasis, that, with the exception of our finer 
elasses of horses, the breeding, rearing, and cultivation of our farm-stock has been 
hitherto considered, by those not intimately acquainted with it, as an occupation of a 
rather vulgar order, and conducted by men of duller intellects than those engaged in 
professional, scientific, commercial, or manufacturing pursuits. Such a supposition is 
a profound and ignorant mistake, based only on an entire misapprehension of the 
study of animal physiology. The cultivation of domestic animals, and their improve- 
ment, through generations of their kind, into the admirable specimens which we now 
see, is as much a branch of the fine arts, applied to animal physiology, as are the su- 
perb specimens of statuary and painting which you to-day witness in these Centen- 
ayes rooms, produced by the successors of Phidias, Michael Angelo, Raphael, or Claude 
rraine. 
Among the improvers of domestic live stock within the last two centuries, both in 
Europe and America, will be found men of the highest intellect, learning, retinement, 
position, and wealth, whose studies have been drawn to the development and exalta- 
tion of the qualities of their animals. I need not recount the names of distinguished 
Europeans, past and present, who have lent their influence and labors to that pursuit; 
nor to Americans, from George Washington, of Virginia, Chancellor Livingston, of 
New York, Henry Clay, the great Kentucky statesman, and a large number of eminent 
men of all professions and pursuits, aside from enterprising farmers proper, whose main 
business has been that of breeding and rearing improved classes of stock—names, both 
dead and living, all too numerous to mention. Nor has the attention of those breed- 
