300 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. 



are their dairy qualities. The Simmenthal race is large, spotted, 

 and rather coarser than the Bernese, but still good milkers, 

 and, no doubt, of hardy constitution. 



Many of the old houses that we jDass beyond Interlaken have 

 some sentiment from the Bible or the poets written over the 

 door in old German letters. The language almost universally 

 spoken in Berne and all this part of Switzerland, is German. 

 I left the foot of these vast mountain ranges with regret. The 

 Yungfrau, the lofty Eiger, the Schreckhorn, the Faulhorn, the 

 Wetterhorn, and other peaks, covered with eternal snow and 

 ice glittering in the sun, and piercing the heavens in their 

 height, are unspeakably grand and impressive. But our world 

 of action is on a lower level, and we must come down into the 

 realities of life. 



I am indebted to the American minister, Mr. Fogg, for most 

 of the following information in regard to the military educa- 

 tion of the Swiss people. This branch of the studies of the 

 young is regarded as of the most vital importance to the safety 

 and the stability of the republic. Theirs is a government of the 

 people, and the sacrifices they make to educate themselves in 

 the art of war show how jealously they guard their liberties by 

 being always prepared to defend them. 



What an advantage the government of the United States 

 would have possessed at the outbreak of the present devastating 

 war, could it have commanded the services of a people all of 

 whom had been trained, from their youth up, in military tactics, 

 and to have called to the service the thousands of horses which 

 its exigencies required, all trained to the evolutions of the 

 field and accustomed to the din and noise of war. 



In Switzerland all the able-bodied men between the ages of 

 nineteen and tliirty are required to receive a certain amount of 

 military instruction and training. Of these a fixed proportion 

 arc required to be cavalry, and every cavalry soldier is required 

 to furnish his own horse, to whose education and training as 

 much attention is given as to the soldier himself. In the artil- 

 lery service also many horses are used, and these are furnished 

 on requisition of the military authorities, by the communes or 

 towns. These horses, like those in the cavalry service, are 

 trained and accustomed to every kind of duty likely to be 

 exacted of them in actual campaign. These horses range from 



