180 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. 



Barns, such as we use for our cattle in New England, are 

 almost wholly unknown. The people, generdly, appear to 

 believe that they arc the favored people of the earth ; that 

 Kentucky blue-grass, Kentucky blue-grass lands, Kentucky 

 horses and Kentucky whiskey are each and all the very best 

 of their kind in the world. They boast of all these, as well 

 as of their hospitality and of their handsome girls. I found 

 good land in Kentucky, — I think I never saw better anywhere ; 

 good pastures, good horses and handsome fat cattle feeding 

 in them ; and at the railroad stations I saw many bright- 

 faced, handsome, happy-looking young women on their way 

 to attend the musical festival in Cincinnati. The men who 

 accompanied them were generally bright-looking, too ; and 

 from what I learned by conversing with them, they are not 

 very hard workers, for they can obtain what they consider 

 the necessities of life, and some of the luxuries, without very 

 great effort. But these people of comparative leisure and 

 independence do not represent the average Kentuckian ; for 

 I saw, loafing around the railroad stations, at the corner stores, 

 and at work in the fields, an entirely different class. 



I saw at Lexington a horse that was, doubtless, worth the 

 $25,000 he cost ; but I saw, also, harnessed to public vehicles, 

 carts and ploughs, horses that no horse owner, either in Ken- 

 tucky or in Massachusetts, would be likely to brag much 

 about. As illustrating the comparative condition of the land, 

 the crops, the animals and the people of Kentucky and of 

 New England, I wish to repeat, as nearly as I may, what I 

 heard a Kentuckian say of them. I was travelling from 

 Bloomfield to Louisville, and in the car-seat directly behind 

 me were two Kentucky farmers whose Imsiness was raising 

 and trading in cattle. One of them had just started on his 

 second trip to New England for the purpose of buying grade 

 Jersey cows to improve the dairy herds of his own State. 

 As strange luck would have it, he had my name in his 

 pocket, among two or three other New Englanders whom he 

 had l)een directed to call on for information relatinir to the 

 object of his trip. Of course Ave were not long in getting 

 acquainted, and it was natural that farming in Kentucky and 

 in New England should l)ccome the principal topic of con- 

 versation. At first his companion did a large share of the 



