No. 4.] DAIRY CATTLE. 83 



yards at St. Paul and bought the commonest kind of ewes 

 I could get. From their appearance they bore more Merino 

 blood than anything else, but I know they had four or five 

 different bloods mixed up in their combination. I took those 

 dams home and had them mated with a first-class, prepotent 

 Southdown sire. The lambs of the second generation were 

 sent to Chicago to the international fair, where they were 

 shown against the world, and they won first class. 



Mr. S. H. Reed (of West Brookfield). The late President 

 Stockbridge of the Massachusetts Agricultural College gave 

 me a rule a good many years ago for controlling sex, which 

 I never forgot. He said every farmer has a practical test in 

 that line when he turns out young cattle. Suppose he turns 

 out a young male between one and two years of age, usually 

 all the first calves that appear will be mixed, may be half 

 males and half females ; but later in the season, as those 

 cattle begin to thrive, they will nearly all be males. That 

 accords with my experience. Also, if I have a young animal 

 in my herd that is not very well fed, nature will sock to bal- 

 ance between the male and female, and there will be more 

 males. If the cows are in good milking shape, and the male 

 is about two years of ago and well kept, so he has the run 

 of the cow T s, then there will be a large predominance of fe- 

 males. That is my experience, and the experience of a great 

 many stock raisers I know of. The principle is, that nature 

 seeks to equalize between males and females. 



I think Mr. Potter is right in what he says of the influence 

 of the cow ; and we can see in the human family that the 

 boys resemble their mothers and the girls their fathers ; and 

 we can distinctly recognize in the cow that she has a greater 

 influence over the males and that the sire has over the females 

 in a good many respects. I believe that the cow influences 

 the quantity of the milk and the male the quality of the milk, 

 speaking in general terms. 



Mr. P. M. Harwood (of Barre). I believe if you have 

 followed the lecturer closely, you will have seen just what 

 he meant in what he said. He said that like producing like 

 is the dominant law. That is true ; but the variations to that 

 law are so strong that it might lead many people to think 



