194 MASSACHUSETTS AGRICULTURE. 



vast grain districts of tlie West are showing signs of incipient 

 exhaustion, while some of our soils are completely worn out. 



England and Scotland have been called the stock nurseries 

 of the world. There cattle-breeding has long been a science, 

 and it has become such, or soon will do so, with us. The 

 United States present unrivalled facilities for the raising of 

 every variety of neat cattle. " We have broad prairies and 

 fertile savannas, rich intervals and sweet-herbaged hillsides, as 

 well as sandy plains, bare, stony ridges, parched wastes of coarse 

 and scanty grass, and bleak northern pastures — all, or nearly 

 all, fitted to the support of animal life, and yet each requiring 

 for its most profitable occupation a race of cattle especially 

 suited to it. We have every variety of temperature, and conse- 

 quently every variety of vegetable products suited for the food of 

 animals. It is all-important that our stock farmers should by 

 patience and care raise stock adapted to our soil and climate." 



A leading writer on the subject of breeding says, a due con- 

 sideration of the natural effects of climate and food is a point 

 worthy of the especial consideration of the stock husbandman. 

 If the breeds employed be well adapted to the situation, and the 

 capacity of the soil is such as to feed them fully, profit may 

 safely be calculated upon. 



The milch cow is to be looked upon as a machine for turning 

 herbage into money. Now it costs a certain amount to keep up 

 the motive power of any machine, and also to make good the 

 wear and tear incident to its working ; and in the case of ani- 

 mals, it is only so much as is assimilated and digested, in addi- 

 tion to the amount thus required, which is converted into milk 

 and meat, so that the greater the proportion which the latter 

 bears to the former, the greater will be the profit to be realized. 

 The milch cow is a highly artificial animal, and is what her cir- 

 cumstances and keeping make her. Place the Ayrshire cow, for 

 instance, so famous for her milking qualities, in the rich blue- 

 grass pastures of Kentucky, and she will soon be fitter for the 

 shambles than for the milk-pail. Her fine milking qualities will 

 disappear in her too luxuriant range of pastures, and she will 

 lay on flesh, looking like a miiiiature Shorthorn. It is said by a 

 celebrated French naturalist that the cow in St. Domingo under- 

 goes material change. She no longer gives milk as she does 



