12 GuENON ON Milch Cows. 



GUEIS^O^'S METHOD OF JUDGIJS'G OF THE 

 YALUE OF STOCK. 



Fifty years ago there was dawning upon the world the first ray of a great 

 discovery. A star was rising in the agricultural world, which was about to 

 shed new light, and like many other valuable discoveries, it was made by 

 one among the lowly, and partly by chance. The author of this new dis- 

 covery has said, " Error flies with the rapidity of lightning, all obstacles 

 vanish before it. Truth, on the contrary, is admitted coldly, often even 

 with doubt, suspicion, and distrust." It is owing partly to this, partly to 

 the fact that this new light was given to the world when the mind of 

 farmers were not ready to receive new ideas of progress as they now seek 

 them, and much to the fact that it was the invention of a foreigner described 

 in a foreign tongue. True a translation of it was made through the 

 medium of an American monthly magazine of agriculture ; but it was one 

 of limited circulation. At that time the number of periodicals devoted 

 to that interest was few, and such new and important questions were not 

 throughly discussed and the knowledge of them placed in every farm-house 

 in the land, as it is at the present day. Shortly after the appearance of 

 M. Guenon's treatise in the magazine, it was reprinted in book form, and 

 received the large circulation of sixty-five thousand copies, between that 

 time and now, and the book most probably sells better to-day than it did 

 then. By many who procured that book the subject was studied, and ad- 

 vantage taken of its revelations, being stored away in the reader's mind 

 for actual practice. By the great majority it was read, but not studied ; 

 driven from it by the apparent complications of the system and the two 

 hundred sub-divisions of it ; by many, perhaps, it was attempted to be put 

 into practice, but without their having given the subject that close inves- 

 tigation which was needed to prove the system correct. It was mostly by 

 this class of persons, because the system was not found to be infallible, 

 that it was denounced and given up, even by men otherwise intelligent ; 

 as if anything human could be infallible. Thus it is that by the ignorant 

 its revelations were received with incredulitj^, and by many of the intelli- 

 gent with doubt; but to the earnest seekers after practical information, it 

 has unfolded a mine of wealth, and they have proved the system by con- 

 tinuous experience, and found it to be the most reliable mode of judging 

 of the value of every member of the bovine species. 



It was a happy thought that suggested itself to the Pennsylvania State 

 Board of Agriculture, to have the system tested by uninterested parties. 

 But extremely difficult, it was, to obtain persons to make the test. Foi 

 those to whom application was made declined it on various grounds, 

 principally because, as Guenon himself has stated in his latest edition, 



