50 



THE GENESEE FARMER. 



NOTES ON FIELDS AND CATTLE. 



Suoh is the title of a gossiping book on farming 

 matters, recently published in England, from the 

 pen of Rev. W. Holt Beever. A few extracts 

 will be read with interest. 



The Cow. — " However, whether we will it or no, 

 we must believe that there exists a cousinly bond 

 between the savage bull of Central Africa, lying 

 sulkily iii wait for the unwary traveler ; the cun- 

 ning bison of the American savannah, so deeply 

 ensconced amidst the reeds of the sunken water- 

 course as to be distinguishable only by its hump— 

 the hunter's prize; and yon meek-eyed dapple 

 milch cow there, sheltering knee deep in the brook 

 beneath a verandah of ash branches, reflectively 

 whisking off the flies from her flank with her tail 



so utterly regardless, meanwhile, of the aged 



female above, gathering cresses for the hall, in the 

 red cloak the young ladies have given her. A cer- 

 tain amount of relationship, such as Youatt sug- 

 gests, one may imagine between the sharp-eyed 

 black group there, the like of which Macgregor 

 drove, that peer down so curiously from beneath 

 the thick fringe upon their foreheads atthe intru- 

 sive pedestrian; between the long, active bull- 

 that is so apt to cut off or precipitate the salmon- 

 fisher's retreat by the tempest-torn passage of the 

 Awe— and the Urus of the Hercyuian forest, men- 

 tioned by Csesar— elephantine, untameable— whose 

 horns, polished and tipped with silver, they were 

 wont to use for the grace-cup at their solemn festi- 

 vals, and whose direct lineal representative is pro- 

 bably the modern lichen-eating Lithuanian auroch; 

 but how ever came the connection between the 

 yak of Thibet and the improved Durham cow, it is 

 beyond us to conceive : the one there, fronting so 

 complacently the ferocious gale, on his exalted lair 

 among the pointed rocks— with back exposed to 

 the pitiless storm, bare as the traveled trunk of a 

 bygone generation — being contented, apparently, 

 with the rug wherewith nature has considerately 

 enwrapped his nether limbs, in everlasting compen- 

 sation, it would seem, for his obligatory existence 

 on those icy Asian wastes, where litter must be 

 scarce; the other, with such queenly calmness, 

 scarce observant of your entrance— chewing quiet- 

 ly the cud across her recumbent calf, as the world 

 renowned baliff of Townley rolls back the door of 

 her stall — on whose mellow cubic form you can 

 detect no shade or hollow, and the elastic padding 

 of whose meat-clad ribs your finger dents in vain." 

 The Horse. — "Your young ones, you can not 

 keep too well. When weaned, which should be, 

 both for their own and their mothers' sake, but es- 

 pecially the mothers', about September, give them 

 plenty of new cow's milk, diluted somewhat with 

 water, crushed corn and bean-flour, with Swedes to 

 make them bone, a few white peas, and a lock of 

 the sweetest upland hay. This, with gentle caresses, 

 should daily be the lot of the young one in his pad- 

 dock and shed. After all, what is it but so many 

 pounds put out to interest? Starve a colt in his 

 first year, and he is spoilt for ever. No subsequent 

 treatment, however judicious or generous, can re- 

 deem the neglect of his early youth — the sinking 

 loin, the worn look, the spindle shanks, too surely 

 attest the treatment he received in infancy, what- 



ever his original calibre may have b^en. In fact, 

 whatever be the stock, 'tis keep and shelter that 

 tell in the end. Look even at that draggle-tailed 

 Elspeth upon the stack there, doling out their pit- 

 tance of mouldy hay to a couple of depressed Here- 

 ford heifers. Two years since, by courtesy Maria, 

 she was a stylish housemaid at the castle ; to-day 

 she is the desponding partner of a too adventurous 

 young farmer. Better had she known when she 

 was well off. In illustration again, only to-day I 

 noticed a red-breasted flunkey fetch in a pair of 

 grumbling, shiny, broad-backed porkers, which, only 

 two months ago, I deemed too dearly bought for a 

 pound apiece. While on the other side of the road, 

 with the last sole surviving item of her starved 

 litter crawling after her, there cropped the scanty 

 grass a sow, the fac-similie on a giant scale of a 

 young mouse — flap-eared, hairless, lank — what a 

 few months since was a farewell gift pig, bought 

 out of a prize Yorkshire small-breed lot, and pre- 

 sented to an old man in our village by bis son, an 

 artisan, upon his leaving for Australia. What a 

 various fate hath befallen them ! The one of aris- 

 tocratic lineage reduced to the poor-house; the 

 other, born in a cot and advanced to aldermanic 

 plenty. On large farms, where the fields are thirty 

 to forty acres each, or upward, in extent, a team 

 of bullocks pays well, there not being the loss of 

 time in turning on such ground, which is one chief 

 reason of complaint against the practice of plow- 

 ing with oxen ; but there must be in addition a 

 sufficient number of horses to do the road work." 

 The Pig. — " ' Sus scrofa, cochon, terrat. Generic 

 character — snout elongated, etc. ; speicfic charac- 

 ter — back bristly, tail hairy, etc' Shades of Mor- 

 land, Wiley, Fisher Hobbs ! Whatever will ye 

 exclaim at such teaching on the part of Mr. Yar- 

 rell ? How doctors have come to disagree here- 

 upon! How diametrically dissimilar the idiosyn- 

 crasy of those, sleek, rounded representatives of 

 porcine civilization which are being annually im- 

 ported from the yards of the. famous Mr. Crisp for 

 crossing with the produce of Prussia and Russia, 

 to the probable future damage of the present trade 

 in bristles. To be practical, however : this inter- 

 esting native should be, as everything else upon the 

 farm, first-rate — broad, lengthy, deep, short-snout- 

 ed, of fine bone, with tail well set on ; a thin 

 pricked ear, and skin gathering in folds even to the 

 hock to be plumped out before Christmas, and of a 

 breed that will fatten on clover, grass, or vetches 

 in summer, mangel wurzel in winter, sliced and 

 slightly sprinkled with barley-meal. Innumerable 

 are the excellent varieties of breed now-a-days pos- 

 sessing such characteristics. Wherever he may 

 hail from (and hail he does lustily on occasion, as 

 you may learn for yourself if you attend an em- 

 barkation of them at Liverpool or Cork), whether 

 from Berkshire, Essex, Yorkshire, Suffolk, Tarn- 

 worth, Windsor, Hampshire, Dorset — each county 

 and district almost having its improved breed, all 

 supremely indebted to a Chinese or Neapolitan 

 forefather — you will have no great difficulty in ob- 

 taining what you want. To Herefordshire was 

 due the pork provision when the Duke was in the 

 Peninsula. Grudge not a few extra shillings (which 

 you may easily save by traveling third-class a jour- 

 ney or two by way of change) in the purchase of 

 an exemplary sow-in-pig to begin with. It is a 



