CO-OPERATION 143 



mention which co-operation is made to render to rural folk engaged 

 in agriculture. That is assistance in breeding live stock. The 

 attention now rightly, and none too soon, being directed to the 

 improvement of our cowherds for milking purposes invests this 

 question, at any rate for the time, with additional importance. 

 Our Government provides stallions and gives pecuniary aid — subject 

 to certain conditions — to societies forming to maintain stallions, 

 bulls, boars, and, it may be, tups, for common use. Governments 

 elsewhere do the same thing, and there is no denying the utility 

 of the encouragement so given. It is designed to bring home to our 

 agricultural public the importance of a point, which may be said to 

 be not even now fully understood — that is, the financial value of 

 good sires — to which should be added, also, good dams — to produce 

 sound profit-yielding stock. In the bovine species, above all 

 others, the dam is a decisive factor — long under-valued — since it is 

 from it mainly that the milk-yielding quality of its offspring is 

 derived. In the matter of neat cattle, the cow-testing, which may 

 likewise be worked by co-operative societies, as it is a great deal 

 abroad, only lately come into fashion in this country, after it had 

 rendered admirable services elsewhere for decennia, is at length 

 making the light of such knowledge to shine in dark places. But the 

 progress made, even in this useful and urgently called-for direction, 

 is still only slow and small. Wherever co-operative spirit is fully 

 awakened now, elsewhere — and to a small extent even among 

 ourselves — small agriculturists will combine to form their own 

 breeding societies, favouring some particular breed. Thus we have 

 our Shorthorn, Ayrshire, and so on, societies, and late in the day 

 we have come to appreciate the remarkable milk -yielding qualities 

 of the Frisian and Holstein breeds, and formed societies for the 

 propagation of these heavy pail-fillers — which are, of course, suited 

 only to certain districts resembling the marshy countries that they 

 come from. The Swiss, whose three well-known breeds share to 

 the full, abroad and in America, the popularity of the Dutch and 

 Holsteins, have similar societies ; and so, indeed, have the Germans 

 and French in great number, but, as a rule, maintained with Govern- 

 ment support. In Switzerland co-operative breeding has been 

 carried a step further. For there are societies formed — a good 

 number, too — for breeding pedigree cattle, with herd-books of their 

 own, to serve for breeding purposes — which among them form a 

 co-operative herd, and the beasts in which, of course, when there 

 is a demand, command a considerably higher price than other beasts 

 — generally speaking, four or five times as much. The herd once 



