SELECTION OP ANIMALS. 23 



facture of cheese — as the great source of profit on his farm, and 

 he secures animals adapted to tliat. Situated as I am near a 

 city, where every quart of milk I make is really made to a 

 profit — a small one, to be sure — it is idle for me to raise Short- 

 horns to produce meat. My pastures are short and sweet, very 

 well adapted to run dairy cows, and the market being close at 

 hand, I am able to make a profit from those cows. So, I say, 

 every man must be governed by the locality in which he lives, 

 and the quality and capacity of his farm in making his selection. 



Now this selection is not by any manner of means an easy 

 thing. It is not every man who can tell what he needs in an 

 animal for beef, for butter, for milk ; you have got to be gov- 

 erned by nice rules in all that business. I insist upon that. 

 The man who can go into a stable or barn or into a pasture and 

 select from a herd of cattle the best animal to put into the stall, 

 the best cow for the production of milk, that man has cultivated 

 his powers of perception and judgment up to a point unequalled 

 by almost any other person in the world. It is astonishing how 

 quick, accurate, careful, precise, a man's eye has got to be in 

 order to settle that question. It is astonishing how few of us 

 have reached that point. You may talk about the exquisite 

 skill with which the manufacturer changes the colors of his 

 warp and woof, and all that, but I have never seen any men 

 with sharper perceptive faculties than the men who have been 

 successful in the selection of animals. 



Now the question comes back to the question of breeding. 

 I said in the beginning that one part of the business was the 

 breeding of animals ; how you can breed animals adapted to a 

 certain purpose. You can purchase them in the market, if your 

 eyes are sharp enough and your purse long enough ; but how 

 are you going to breed them so as to have a better herd than 

 your neighbor, or so as to transmit the good qualities of your 

 own herd. In the first place, having ascertained for what 

 capacities your herd is intended, the business of breeding is 

 just as simple, plain and straightforward as the business of 

 ploughing or manufacturing. It only requires this : that the 

 females should be properly selected ; always taking it for 

 granted that the female will be influenced to a very great extent 

 by the first male which impregnates her. Always take care, if 

 you desire a certain specific ty^^e of animal, to begin with the 



