100 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. [Jan. 



monstrosity ; yet we have the fact continually before us that 

 our herds are not yet up to a normal standard of production. 

 I have not attempted a discussion of the conditions for success 

 in growing horses, sheep, swine or poultry. The same gen- 

 eral principles are involved, and everywhere the cry is for 

 individual merit, backed by blood inheritance. There always 

 was and always will be an active call for the well-bred horse, 

 provided that from birth to maturity it has been fed and 

 educated with the one thought of highest excellence. There 

 is no room for scrubs in the market of to-day, whether of 

 animals or men. It will not do to rest on blood or breeding, 

 because the call is for the individual ; and as the lines con- 

 verge, as they surely will, and the demands grow more 

 exacting, the standard must continually be raised. Early 

 maturity in everything must be our watchword, if success 

 is to be grasped. The profits of poultry culture can hardly 

 be imagined, after all the years of breeding and study of 

 rations. Success to-day is to be found in turning the 

 currents into the channels most desired at maturity, and thus 

 early fixing the tendencies. I believe that the value of the 

 matured animal, in any special line of production, is fixed 

 during the first year, and that, from the first, systematic 

 work should prevail. Selections of sires and dams must be 

 with the one thought of increasing the product or making 

 more rapid growth. The feed from birth should be selected 

 with sole reference to this, and by regular habits the animal 

 best fitted for its peculiar vocation. 



We speak of nature's methods ; why, every condition is 

 unnatural. The horse was created to bound over the hills 

 and plains at will, not to run a mile in 1.37|, or trot in 

 2.08|. The dairy cow by nature would give milk sufficient 

 to rear her offspring, while we are seeking for ten thousand 

 pounds of milk or five hundred pounds of butter yearly. 

 Nature never created the eis;ht-foot ox, or the magnificent 

 Percheron. Man must have the credit for these grand 

 results. The hen in her wild state hatches perhaps two 

 broods in a season ; we want two hundred eggs or more 

 yearly, and, wanting these, we reach after and secure them. 

 Size, color, form, growth and production, are all unnatural 

 conditions, and only indicate how much man has accom- 



