THE SHORTHORNS'. 437 



girth, seven feet six inches in length, four feet six inches in height, 

 and weighed twelve hundred and fifty pounds, none varying much 

 from these dimensions. One of the four produced at four years old, 

 in the month of June, an average of fifty-six pounds of milk per day 

 for thirty days, and one year later, in seven days, seventy-three 

 pounds per day. The milk, too, is of the most fattening and nu- 

 tritive quality, as is evidenced by a calf born in August weighing at 

 birth one hundred and ten pounds, increasing in eighty days to 

 three hundred and fifty pounds, or an average gain of three pounds 

 per day. 



As the Holsteins are peculiarly adapted to our section of country, 

 are excellent for cheese-making or production of milk for the family 

 and market, and for butter, we hope to see the breed more extended, 

 believing they are pre-eminently adapted to the wants of the general 

 farmer, combining the three desirable qualities of dairy, beef and 

 work-cattle. One objection has been made to them — that if proper 

 attention is not paid to their breeding they are apt to degenerate 

 into large, coarse stock, 



THE SHORTHORNS. 



The Shorthorns would naturally next claim our attention, deriving 

 so much as they did from the Dutch breed, and also on account of 

 the importance to which they have attained in the United States. 

 In 1815 and 18 16 a few Shorthorns were imported into this country, 

 and for the next four years more were imported into Kentucky, were 

 carefully bred, and from thence spread through the Western coun- 

 try. In 1834 an association in Ohio brought over nineteen head, 

 and in the following year two additional lots, and since then several 

 hundred with well-established pedigrees have been imported into 

 the United States. From the fact that the first prominent breeders 

 of the Shorthorns resided in Durham county, they took the name of 

 Durhams, and have so retained it with many of our farmers ever 

 since. 



During the fifty years the Shorthorns have been domesticated in 

 this country they have been imported in greater numbers than any 

 other breed, they are more widely known, and have acquired greater 

 popularity ; surely this must have been from some good qualities 

 which have so strongly tended to recommend them. They have 

 become acchmated, and are healthy, thriving on common food 

 equally well with our native cattle. They are of large size, fine, 

 tender meat, grow rapidly, and take on meat and fat fast in propor- 

 tion to the amount of food they consume ; make powerful and docile 

 oxen, are excellent in the dairy, giving large quantities of milk and 



