312 MASSACHUSETTS AGRICULTURE. 



meal, cacli quart producing t-^o ounces of butter ; the quantity 

 being so large, I had the milk kept by itself, and at seven days' 

 end, we churned twenty-six pounds of butter." ' And, he adds: 

 " this cow, during the time, got nothing but grass from an ordi- 

 nary pasture." Of anotlier short-horn cow, he reports "an 

 extraordinary yield of milk and butter from an animal of capital 

 feeding qualities, and of good points and breeding. This cow 

 gave, on a pasture of middling quality, twenty-eight quarts of 

 milk per day from the time of calving in spring till mid-summer, 

 and averaged twenty quarts of milk per day for twenty weeks. 

 In thirty-two weeks she produced three hundred and seventy- 

 three pounds of butter, averaging eleven and two-thirds pounds 

 per week ; the greatest weekly quantity given, during that 

 time, was seventeen pounds, and the least seven pounds." 



The chairman of this committee was himself once the owner 

 of a cow, often exhibited and admired in our pens, of the half- 

 blood of " Denton," of large size and great beauty, which gave 

 from twenty-five to thirty quarts of strained milk per day, for 

 several successive weeks, and of such amazing richness, that the 

 late Col. Pickering, finding occasion, in the course of his famous 

 controversy with Col. Powell, of Philadelphia, as to the relative 

 value of the native and imported breeds of neat cattle, to in- 

 quire into the matter, on being shown a pitcher of the cream, 

 fresh from the skimming, flatly declared, that it had been 

 already churned ! Such, however, are rare instances, and may 

 be regarded as furnishing little assurance of general produc- 

 tion. It is not the intention of the committee, nor is this the 

 fitting opportunity, to .discuss the merits of particular breeds. 

 "We wish only to suggest, that what has been done elsewhere, 

 may be done again, and here, — and that with judgment in the 

 selection of stock, and care in the rearing, as fine animals, of 

 any race, may be found on our farms, and seen at our shows, as 

 ever graced the cattle fairs of England. The properties and 

 products of every race have frequently been given to the public 

 by numerous breeders of great intelligence, both in this coun- 

 try and in Europe ; and he among us who, hj a careful exami- 

 nation and presentment of the evidence, in a brief compendium 

 of instances and facts, should now furnish the ready means of 

 comparison and preference to the practical farmer, would 



