152 MASSACHUSETTS AGRICULTURE. 



" As a man thinketli so he is ; " let every many enjoy his own 

 opinion. For the argument in favor of grade bulls, we refer 

 the reader to the very able report of the chairman of committee 

 on grade bulls of this year. 



cows. 



Never since our organization have we had the pleasure of 

 seeing such an array of fine cows, forty-two individual or single 

 cows entered for premiums and shown, besides the three dairies 

 of twelve good animals, making sixty-one in all, each worthy of 

 a premium, and only seventy-nine dollars to be awarded to them 

 all. The cow is really our step-mother, and no beast kept in 

 the county is more profitable than the cow ; with butter and 

 cheese at the present prices, a good cow certainly pays ; a poor 

 one should not be tolerated at all. The crying sin of our dairy 

 or cow men is the indiscriminate slaughter of the calves. But 

 few comparatively are raised, thus diminishing yearly the num- 

 ber of good cows in the county, and probably is one cause of 

 the exceeding high price of good milch cows among us. We 

 think the raising of our best heifer calves an item of great 

 importance, and should be encouraged by the society. Of thor- 

 oughbred cows there were shown six Shorthorns, four Herefords, , 

 Ayrshires two, Jerseys two, showing that our farmers are begin- 

 ning to realize the value of blood. It costs no more to raise a 

 cow worth two or three hundred dollars than one worth only 

 fifty. We leave the matter of premiums, of particular items, 

 to the committees upon the several classes of cows, only adding 

 one remark in general : that is, there is no animal coming to 

 our fairs so liable to injury by want of attendance as the milch 

 cow ; they need constant care and watching and cannot come a 

 great distance without more or less damage. We ought to bear 

 this in mind when we offer our premiums. 



The great attraction of the show was the splendid exhibition 

 of fine herds, nine in number, comprising 180 animals. Three 

 of the herds, T. J. Field, of Northfield, J. S. Grinnell, of Green- 

 field, and J. Fogg, of Deerfield, were pure thoroughbreds. This 

 department, we are pleased to observe, was better represented 

 than at any previous show of our society. Four of the herds of 

 grade animals, numbering more than a hundred, were from 

 Shclburne ; as many more, and probably the best herd in this 



