194 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. [Pub. Doc 



first calf until a year afterwards, and we had no end of 

 trouble. I haven't the slightest question in my mind that 

 one of the characteristics of the Jersey and Guernsey cow, 

 the result of more than a century of careful breeding in their 

 native isles, is to make cows of them at two years of age ; 

 and that it is going backwards, wasting time, to undertake 

 to change this now from two to three years. I certainly 

 should not be willing, from such data as I have available 

 now, to undertake, as a rule, to hold animals three years for 

 their first calf, instead of bringing them in at two years of 

 aofe or thereabouts. 



Prof. F. S. Cooley (of Amherst). I take it the resisting 

 power of animals is more dependent on the treatment for the 

 first two } r ears than it is on the age of the animals. A two- 

 year-old heifer, under proper treatment, may be equally 

 resistant to a three-3 ear-old. I believe it is truly stated 

 that the average of barrenness is increased by delay of 

 breeding; bevond the natural time. 



I want to say one thing more in endorsement of what the 

 speaker of the afternoon has said. There is a prejudice 

 amongst farmers against an agricultural education. I have 

 known farmers who did not want their boys to follow in 

 their footsteps. I have known others who did not care to 

 send their boys to the Agricultural College, because they 

 could teach them to milk cows and hoe potatoes and plant 

 corn as well as they could there. There is this utter mis- 

 conception as to what it means. We need to consider a 

 little as to what an agricultural education is, — that it is to 

 teach the boys to think, not to teach them to milk cows and 

 plant potatoes, and other drudgery ; but that an agricul- 

 tural school teaches bo} r s to think, just as much as a classical 

 school teaches them to think, and fits them for the needs of 

 the present and the things that will concern them in busi- 

 ness life. 



Mr. Edward M. Thurston (of Swansea). In part of 

 the address of Governor Hoard he alluded to his county ag- 

 ricultural school. We know that in this State quite a num- 

 ber of our large cities are appropriating money for textile 

 schools, where they teach the young men and women to man- 



