55 



tent that the perfection of our poultry may even 

 be classed among the fine arts of animated na- 

 ture, and challenge competition with any por- 

 tion of the universe. 



Least and last of the domestic creatures which 

 engage our attention may be named a small in- 

 sect, 



THE HONEY BEE. 



Time, long before and ever since the bee made 

 its honey in the carcass of the dead lion slain by 

 Sampson, has noted this useful insect in its com- 

 panionship with man, as well as in its wild habi- 

 tations in the wilderness, where climate and 

 vegetation favored its propagation. It furnish- 

 es us the most luxuriant of sweets in its honey, 

 and an important commodity in its wax. The 

 aggregate annual commercial value of our bee- 

 product is probably Imndreds of thousands of 

 dollars, being difficult to determine, from the 

 want of current statistics ; yet all who choose 

 to investigate may be assured of their import- 

 ance. Of bee literature, we have public jour- 

 nals devoted to their interest, many volumes of 

 printed books, and divers essays in our agricul- 

 tural periodicals : and were I to relate the an- 

 nals of my own personal companionship with 

 them for many years past, I should only tell you, 

 that at the present day they are both as untam- 

 ed and uncivilized as when the great patriarch, 

 Noah, let them out of his ark to forage among 

 the renewed plants and flowers at the foot of 

 Mount Ararat. They live, propagate, and sub- 

 sist by instinct alone, and not all the invention 

 or ingenuity of man has been able to improve 

 their qualities, to change their habits, or invite 

 them to a companionable docility. Even the 

 importation of the superior Italian bee into our 

 country in late years, and crossing them on our 

 common stock, has not perceptibly improved 

 their habits. So, lovable as they may be in their 

 sweets and wax, they are barbarians now, as 

 ever, and equally at home in the hollow trunk 

 of a tree in the wildest forest, as in their hives 

 amid the flowers of the field, or the refinements 

 of the most highly cultivated orchard and gar- 

 den. 



Now, gentlemen, in all this long dissertation I 

 have probably told you nothing new, and little 

 which will prove instructive, or even worthy of 

 publication. Yet we have seen that from the 

 rudest material at the beginning of our agricul- 

 tural settlements we have made decided pro- 

 gress in the breeding and cultivation of our do- 

 mestic animals, and that chiefly, within the last 

 century. We find that much has thus far been 

 accomplished, and with the aids and lights now 

 at our disposal, we trust a still more rapid and a 

 more widely disseminated progress can be 

 achieved in the future. 



The present value of all our varieties of do- 

 mestic live stock in the United States and its 

 territories may be safely estimated at two thou- 

 sand millions of dollars, and their annual pro- 

 duct of all kinds at one thousand millions 

 more. Full 30 per cent, has been added to the 

 aggregate per capita value of ourlgraded stock 

 by improvements in their breeding within the 

 last fifty years, and at no increased cost in their 

 keeping, although those improved animals as 

 yet extend over only a fractional part of our 

 country. What then may be the increased 

 measure of value when if such a thing be pos- 

 siblethat improvement shall embrace the farm- 

 stock of our entire broad nationality ? It must 

 be almost incalculable. 



In review of this live-stock history and pro- 

 gress which has been considered, I wish here to 

 note, and with somewhat of emphasis, that, 

 with the exception of our finer classes of horses, 

 the breeding, rearing, and cultivation of our 

 farm-stock has been hitherto considered, by 

 those not intimately acquainted with it, as an 

 occupation of a rather vulgar order, and con- 

 ducted by men of duller intellects than those 



engaged In professional, scientific, commercial, 

 or manufacturing pursuits. Such a supposition 

 is a profound and ignorant mistake, based only 

 on an entire misapprehension of the study of 

 animal physiology. The cultivation of domestic 

 animals, and their improvement, through gene- 

 rations of their kind, into the admirable speci- 

 mens which we now see, is as much a branch of 

 the fine arts, applied to animal physiology, as 

 are the superb specimens of statuary and paint- 

 ing which you to-day witness in these Centen- 

 nial rooms, produced by the successors of Phi- 

 dias, Michael Angelo, Raphael, or Claude Lor- 

 raine. 



Among the improvers of domestic live stock 

 within the last two centuries, both in Europe 

 and America, will be found men of the highest 

 intellect, learning, refinement, position, and 

 wealth, whose studies have been drawn to the 

 development and exaltation of the qualities of 

 their animals. I need not recount the names of 

 distinguished Europeans, past and present, who 

 have lent their influence and labors to that pur- 

 suit ; nor to Americans, from George Washing- 

 ton, of Virginia, Chancellor Livingston, of New 

 York, Henry Clay, the great Kentucky states- 

 man, and a large number of eminent men of all 

 professions and pursuits, aside from enterpris- 

 ing farmers proper, whose main business has 

 been that of breeding and rearing improved 

 classes of stock names both dead and living, 

 all too numerous to mention. Nor has the at- 

 tention of those breeders and improvers been 

 limited to the most valuable classes of stock, 

 but equally so to those of minor commercial 

 value. Women, too, of equal rank and position 

 in society with men, both in Europe and Amer- 

 ica, may be classed in the noble array of fine- 

 stock improvers all in their labors benefactors 

 of mankind. 



God has appointed our lot in a country of di- 

 versified climates, and blessed it with a won- 

 drous fertility of soils. If a due improvement 

 of our advantages be hereafter neglected, on 

 those guilty of that neglect will rest the penalty; 

 and yet, when another Centennial of American 

 Independence shall arrive, we trust that those 

 who then succeed us may rejoice, as we, their 

 progenitors, now do at the present, in a still 

 higher advancement to crown their labors with 

 thanksgiving and gratitude to the benignant 

 Father of Mercies, for the successes they shall 

 have achieved and enjoyed. 



