STOCK-miSBAXDRY IN MASSACHUSETTS. 195 



with fears that some cow might get loose from her stall and 

 injure her companions. 



Perhaps in justice to myself, as well as to those who in- 

 vited me to treat this subject, I ought to say that I am not 

 at the present time a breeder of any kind of cattle, and can, 

 therefore, discuss the subject of polled cattle without being 

 open to the charge of having an axe to grind, nor any horn 

 of my own to blow. While I owned polled cattle and had 

 them for sale I could never feel at liberty to say publicly 

 half so much in their favor as I believed their merits would 

 justify. Horns upon cows' heads, like pistols in boys' pock- 

 ets, make them dangerous companions to associate with ; for 

 what is a horn or a pistol good for if never brought into use? 

 A herd of polled cattle kept by themselves will run together 

 as peacefully and safely as a pen of pigs or sheep. They 

 are never afraid of one another, because they never injure 

 one another, and not getting injured they have no cause to 

 get angry or become vicious. I have been visited by men 

 who were prejudiced against polled cattle, because, as they 

 said, they looked so odd, — for some men consider a horn an 

 ornament, — but after seeing a herd of polls together for a little 

 while their prejudice has usually been overcome. We have 

 been breeding horns partly from necessity, but chiefly be- 

 cause we have not thought much about the matter. The 

 horns could all be bred off from our domestic cattle, and I 

 believe that they will be, when public attention is sufBciently 

 brought to the subject. The polled breeds of Scotland and 

 England have been gradually built up because of their 

 superior merits becoming known and acknowledged by the 

 farmers in general in the localities where they were at first 

 bred only by the few. 



It is claimed that removing the horns from young calves 

 for only a few generations, and retaining only those which 

 are hornless, will establish the no-horned character. I cannot, 

 from my own experience, vouch for the truth of this, but 

 there appears to be authority for the assertion. The removal 

 of the horns from a steer calf, while they are attached only to 

 the skin, cannot be a more painful or more dangerous opera- 

 tion than the universal one of castration. A polled bull of 

 pure blood stamps his hornless peculiarity upon his get with 



