196 BOARD OF AGEICULTUEE. 



remarkable power. I could read you letters from cor- 

 respondents who have crossed polled bulls upon their herds 

 of horned cows and obtained ninety per cent, of polled 

 calves ; in some cases more. I have found that from such 

 crosses the heifers are nearly all polled ; the occasional horns 

 coming out, as might be expected, more often on the bulls. I 

 make no claims for the polled breeds above others except 

 because they are hornless, but on this account more desira- 

 ble as domestic animals. The Galloways and Angus — par- 

 ticularly the latter — have, however, recently come to the 

 front in the prize rings at the fat-stock shows, both in 

 Europe and in this country ; and the Norfolk and Suffolk 

 Reds, besides being good beef cattle, are, many of them, most 

 excellent dairy animals. The handsomest herd of cattle, 

 according to my taste, that I ever saw, was a herd put in 

 quarantine last year, at Waltham, by two Englishmen who 

 brought them over. Another herd, said to be even better, 

 but which I did not see, was imported later by Col. J. B. 

 Mead of Vermont. The prices asked for each herd were 

 thought by our New England breeders too high, so they 

 were allowed to go West, where their peculiar merits are 

 better appreciated. 



If there is anything that I would specially keep clear of, 

 it is a public excitement, a contagious fever, or, as it is now 

 more fashionably expressed, a " boom " in anything relating 

 to agriculture, whether it be in horticultural novelties, silk- 

 worm trees, fast horses, blooded cattle or poultry. I do 

 not believe that an investment of seven thousand Horins in a 

 single tulip, or forty thousand dollars in a single cow, was 

 ever a good investment for any sane, sober man ; and I be- 

 lieve that the newspaper press of the country is at fault, when 

 it lends its influence to parties who have a pecuniary interest 

 in working up booms. Men fall into holes often enough 

 without having holes dug expressly to entrap them. Were 

 I in favor of booms, I think I should know about how to go 

 to work to set one going. If it were in cows, I would 

 select a good one, and feed her for a week or two as I would 

 a hog for a premium, — almost to the point of death. After I 

 had got her well under way, I would sot my hired man to 

 get up a milk or butter record; paying him, of course, in 



