440 THE PEOPLE'S FARM AND STOCK CYCLOPEDIA. 



constant effort to improve it. 4th. Its food and care must be 

 such as to give the best development for the purpose for which 

 it is kept. 5th. It should always be managed so as to increase 

 the fertility of the farm, both by the system of rotation which 

 it renders practicable, and by the saving and intelligent applica- 

 tion of the manure produced. 



Although these points will be fully discussed in the various 

 chapters of the book, I wish briefly to notice them here. 



1st. The farmer who attempts to make pork a leading pro- 

 duct must have a farm well adapted to corn. If his lands are 

 broken and unfit for the plow, sheep will probably give the best 

 profit, or if he keeps cattle he will need some of the smaller 

 and more active breeds. 



2d. On many farms too much stock is kept. Four old, run- 

 down horses are kept to do the work that two good ones would 

 easily perform. The farmer attempts to winter more stock than 

 he has food for, and the consequent scrimping brings them to 

 the spring in such poor condition that the best season of growth 

 is required to get them back to the weight and condition of the 

 previous autumn. 



3d. The poorer quality of stock which, unfortunately, is 

 still too common never does and never will give any profit. 

 Scrub colts that are never worth seventy-five dollars each 

 scrub cattle, which must be kept to three or four years old to 

 attain a weight of one thousand pounds ; leggy sheep, with 

 light carcasses, which shear but three or four pounds of wool 

 each, and " Elm Peeler " hogs, that like " Pharaoh's lean kine," 

 are still thin and poor when they have devoured the pro- 

 ducts of the years of plenty such stock the farmer should not 

 keep. It should be remembered that stock never improves 

 without care and watchfulness, and that as the neglected field 

 will inevitably grow up to weeds and briers, so certainly will 

 the stock on the farm deteriorate unless careful attention is 

 given to breeding and feeding. The farmer who never consulted 

 the market reports, and who sold his grain at a price far below 

 what they were offering at his nearest station, would be thought 

 a fit candidate for a lunatic asylum, but how much wiser is he 



