STOCK-HUSBANDRY IN MASSACHUSETTS. 197 



proportion to the size of his report, for a single week's 

 spurt. Then I would write letters to all the leading papers, 

 setting forth the wonderful i)Owers and aecomplishments of 

 the Queen of Humbug Hollow, and aceompany the cor- 

 respondence with an advertisement of a half-brother, or a 

 few sisters, cousins or aunts of my wonderful cow. If I had 

 a few trusty friends that would swap with me even, a bull 

 or a heifer, and call the prices a good many times the real 

 value of the animals, and would get such sales into the 

 papers too, it would probably help along the boom. I 

 don't say that anybody else ever thought of such a method 

 of getting up a boom. This may be an original idea. 



The price of polled cattle a few years ago in England was 

 just about what they were worth for beef; but since their 

 merits have become more widely known, and especially since 

 the Americans began to import them, the prices have mate- 

 rially advanced. Good polled cattle cannot be imported and 

 sold now for less than from $200 to $500 each ; but a few breed- 

 ers, who could afford to wait for their returns, could establish 

 herds of pure polled cattle, either of the beef or milking fam- 

 ilies, and after a few years be able to sell young bulls, at 

 prices which farmers desiring to breed the horns off from 

 their own herds could afford to pay, and at prices, too, which 

 would well remunerate the breeders. 



There are also a considerable number of polled cattle scat- 

 tered through the country, particularly in Vermont, Canada, 

 Pennsylvania and Virginia, which may be termed common 

 cows, as they have no recorded pedigree or written history, but 

 many of them are superior dairy cows. It is not an uncom- 

 mon expression among cattle men that they never knew a 

 poor no-horn. I could not say that ; but I know that I have 

 seen many noble-looking polled cows among the herds of so- 

 called common cattle in the vicinity of Philadelphia, Washing- 

 ton, and Harper's Ferry in Virginia. The valuable breeds of 

 Europe have all been created by selecting from the common 

 stock of the country and breeding it for a number of genera- 

 tions with skill and good judgment. 



I have not a word to say against good pure-bred stock, 

 but all the good qualities are not gathered inside the lines 

 which separate the so-called pure-bred cattle from the so- 



