SHORT-HORNS IN JNIASSACHUSETTS. 161 



The CiiAiKMAN. Mr. Williams has certainly kept his farm 

 in a very commendable and desirable condition. 



I l)eg to diller from the speaker in his statement with re- 

 gard to the plant called " live-forever," that it cannot be ex- 

 terminated. There are two ways that you can get rid of 

 that plant. If you will plough the field very late in the fall 

 and turn the roots up, every root that comes to the surface 

 will freeze to death, and you have got rid of so much of it. 

 There is another way. If you will seed it down and turn it 

 into pasture, in tiiree years you cannot find a particle of it. 

 That I have tried and I know it to be so. This field that I 

 have ploughed was solid with livcrforever, you might say ; 

 it looked like a good crop of clover, and I have had people 

 w4io came along say to me, " What a wonderful crop of 

 clover you have there ! " To-day you can hardly find a root 

 of the pest. 



Adjourned to two o'clock. 



Afternoon Session. 



The Board re-assembled at two o'clock, and the chairman 

 introduced as the first lecturer of the afternoon, Mr. Will- 

 iam R. Sessions of Hampden. 



SHORT-HORNED CATTLE IN MASSACHUSETTS. 



BY WILLIAM R. SESSIONS OF HAMPDEN. 



We learn from tradition, that hundreds of years before the 

 Norman conquest, there was in the north-eastern counties of 

 England, a breed of cattle described as "of large size, with 

 short, stubby horns, coarse heads and shoulders, wide hips 

 and thick, cloddy thighs." They were good feeders, slow to 

 mature, but made heavy carcasses of beef, and were good 

 milkers when well fed. They were also strong and docile 

 for labor. These cattle resembled in some respects the 

 cattle of north-western Europe. From this resemblance, 

 rather than from direct evidence, it has been supposed that 

 when the Danes invaded England they brought cattle with 

 them, and that the union of their blood with the native cattle 



