220 AMERICAN CATTLE. 



should familiarize her to the sight of the best of her kind. If an 

 inferior male, a steer, or ox, for instance, be running in the same 

 field, or an adjoining one, where she can see him (and such 

 steer, or ox, will always strive to appease her passion, if they can 

 get together, to which attempt she readily submits,) he may so 

 affect her imagination thus operated upon, as to impress to some 

 extent the foetus which may soon be conceived under the action 

 of a proper bull. Therefore she should be prevented any such 

 familiarity with inferior brutes. This, to the common observer, 

 may appear absurd; but we will give an instance: Some years 

 ago, in the winter season, we had a thorough bred short-horn 

 cow, which the herdsman had just let out of the stable with 

 other cows to water. She was immediately discovered to be in 

 heat. As she was passing through the yard, a villainous black 

 scrub of a bull from a neighboring farm, had strayed away, and 

 broke into our premises, and at that moment had come into the 

 yard. He encountered the cow, and before the herdsman could 

 reach them, a hurried coition had taken place. The cow was 

 immediately separated from him, put into a small enclosure, and 

 a thorough bred bull of her own breed admitted to her, with the 

 usual and repeated effect. But it proved of no avail. In due 

 time, the cow produced a black-roan bull calf, "steel mixed." 

 He turned out a good one, taking more the form of the cow than 

 of his sire, and we made a steer of him. The winter in which he 

 became a yearling, when running in the yard with some other 

 calves, the door of the stable, in which several thorough bred 

 short-horn cows were standing, tied in their stalls, was open. 

 That calf, in a frolic, ran bounding into the stable. One of the 

 cows but a few days previous having received the bull, (a 

 thorough bred short-horn,) started in alarm, threw her head on one 

 side, saw the calf running by, and gave a loud, sudden bawl. 

 It was only an emotion of fright, and in a moment she was over 

 it. At the proper time she calved, and that calf, a pure roan 



