BEGINNINGS OF ILLINOIS CATTLE-BREEDING 169 



visitors. He was also awarded a prize for a valuable 

 treatise on raising and feeding cattle on the prairies 

 of Illinois. This will be found on page 372 in volume 

 2 of the Transactions of the Illinois Agricultural 

 Society. 



Gapt. BROWN was the foremost advocate of the 

 value of blue grass in this state. He always claimed 

 that one hundred acres of it were equal in value to 

 sixty-six and two-thirds acres of corn, in the rearing 

 and management of live stock. Would that his voice 

 could be raised today by way of protest against the 

 wholesale destruction of pastures that has attended 

 the grain-growing craze of recent years in our lead- 

 ing agricultural states! 



During the later years of his life the three sons, 

 WILLIAM, CHARLES and BENJAMIN, were in partnership 

 with their father in the management of the estate, 

 and under the firm name of JAMES N. BROWN'S SONS 

 they continued the breeding and feeding operations 

 with profit to themselves and the live-stock interests 

 of the west, a marked instance of their influence 

 for good being their insistence, at the foundation of 

 the Chicago Fat Stock Show late in the seventies, 

 that the big four and five year-old bullocks then so 

 popular were really unprofitable and should not be 

 encouraged. Capt. BROWN had always insisted that 



