stock into Great Britain ; but there is reason to believe that the natives had better 

 cattle than Italy or the South of Europe could boast, before Julius C^sar was born. 

 Like most of the States in this Republic, the British Islands and Germany are naturally 

 adapted to all pastoral operations. The live stock of this country, so recently intro- 

 duced from Europe, is now woith very nearly six million dollars ; and if we can induce 

 the American people to study the natural laws by which all domesticated animals are 

 g-overned, their value may soon be doubled. More attention must be paid to grazing 

 binds and winter forage, and greater care is necessary in propagating only from the best 

 families and races. By rearing none but good animals, and always kee})iug them in 

 prime condition, a most auspicious change in the neat stock of the United States mioht 

 be realized in a few years. On the other hand, if no attention is paid to the daily 

 supply of food and water, and none to the principles of breeding, deterioration is inevi- 

 table. Our native cattle have in no respect been fairly dealt by ; and we insist on the 

 public duty to give them a " fair chance" to win the highest honors as milkers, 

 working oxen, and meat for the table. It does not detract from the just merits of the 

 Devons, or Short Horns, Herefords, 'or Ayrshires, to maintain the necessity of treating 

 all other neat cattle with equal care and skill for the benefit of the whole community. 

 Speaking, in round numbers, the food annually consumed by twenty million head of 

 cattle in this country is capable of yielding in milk and beef a net gain of one hundred 

 million dollars, over and above what is now realized. These living machines, kept mainly 

 to convert grass, grain, and roots into milk and meat, can never be understood and used 

 to the best advantage until they are carefully studied. 



THE WANTS OF THE SOIL. 



Under the above heading the Connecticut Valle?j Farmer and Meehanie contains some 

 sensible remarks prefixed to an extract from a memorial to Congress in favor of appro- 

 priating a part of the public lands for educational purposes, and especially to found a 

 National Normal School, which was drawn and presented by the proprietor of the Gen- 

 esee Farmer. As this memorial has never been noticed, we believe, in this journal, the 

 extract is copied from the Farmer and Mechanic below : 



"At present, not far from three-fourths of the entire labor and capital of the United 

 States are employed, either directly or indirectly, in the great work of robbing the soil 

 of the few things that God placed in it for the support of vegetable and animal hfe, 

 without making, or pretending to make, any adequate restitution. All tillage is a most 

 unnatural operation, and the matter removed in crops by no means indicates the whole 

 of the loss of the elements of fertility that arated fields sustain. An intelligent wheat- 

 grower in Wisconsin writes to the agricultural department of the patent ofiiee, that 

 lands which have been cultivated twelve years, in that nayv State, now yield but half the 

 annual harvests that they did when first tilled and seeded. An extensive corn grower 

 , in Indiana informs your memorialist, that the rich river bottoms of that State now yield 

 only thirty-five bushels per acre, which once produced, with an equal amount of tillage, 

 seventy bushels per acre. Maize being by far the most important crop grown in this 

 country, much pains have been taken to learn the commercial value of the raw material 

 necessarily consumed to form a bushel of that grain ; of which over six hundred million 

 bushels are annually extracted from American soil. 



" A gentleman in Connecticut writes, that his farm, of some two hundred and fifty 

 acres, has been cultivated two centuries, and consequently has reached what may be 

 regarded as. the normal condition of long-tilled earth. He finds it necessary to apply 

 ten cords of compost manure to an acre, to raise forty bushels. The manure costs him 



