ORGANISATION. 189 



and heifers of these breeds have a large sale on both sides of 

 the Atlantic. 



However, to keep the herd up to the mark, it is found 

 necessary from time to time to renew the blood by importa- 

 tion of fresh beasts coming from the healthy Swiss home, 

 where Alpage, and mountain air and mountain herbage, 

 maintain the old quahties. 



That indicates a further valuable use still to which 

 Co-operation is put for the utiHsation of live stock. Alpage 

 — the annual pasturing of Swiss cattle during the summer 

 months on the mountain tops — is really a co-operative 

 practice, M^hich is now spreading fast — though without 

 the use of any Alps — in Germany. And Mr. Prothero may 

 be said to have set the example of something like it in our 

 country, by the creation of a common pasture for collective 

 use by the eighteen occupiers of land bought from the Duke 

 of Bedford at Maulden. Common pastures, co-operatively 

 acquired and co-operatively held, are becoming rather 

 general in Germany, where, in the midst of a general practice 

 of stall feeding, it is found that growing beasts require 

 movement and fresh air. Co-operative societies have 

 accordingly been formed for the pasturing of stock on what 

 may be looked upon as regulated " commons," on which 

 both overstocking and oppression of the small man by 

 the big are safely guarded against. 



But, to return to the Swiss cattle-breeding societies, 

 the invention of M. de Wattenwiel, of Elfenau, near Berne. 

 The difference in price between stock bought for breeding 

 purposes and for the i butcher's knife is so considerable 

 that it is not unnatural that owners of cows should have 

 turned their attention to herdbook breeding. Animals 

 quahfied for sale as breeding stock fetch about five times 

 the price that animals intended for slaughtering do. The 

 start having been made, there are now some 850 societies 

 in Switzerland which breed. There are also some similar 

 societies in the United States, which country has been quicker 

 than our own to adopt the Swiss practice. And the ques- 

 tion may be asked : whether in our country, noted as it 

 is for its excellent breeds, in request all the world over. 



