O) 



MASSACHUSETTS AGRICULTURE. 



CATTLE HUSBANDRY. 



Address before the Hampshire, Franklin and Hampden Agricnltural Society. 



BY RICHARD GOODMAN. 



In the year 1624, in the month of March, Edward WinsIo\r, 

 one of the most enterprising members of the Plymoutli Colony, 

 who had been sent to England by his associates, the " under- 

 takers," successors to " The Company of merchant adventurers," 

 returned, bringing with him an important accession to the Pil- 

 grims — three heifers and one bull, supposed to be Devons, the 

 first neat cattle that came into New England, and the beginning 

 of those importations from which the dairy and working stock 

 of our forefathers and ourselves have descended. In 1636, 

 twelve years subsequent to this first importation of cattle, cows 

 were worth <£25 each, and of course at such price were not then 

 used for eating, yet a quart of milk could be then bought for a 

 penny. " One Taylor of Lynne," according to an ancient 

 chronicle of those days, " on his passage over with a cow had 

 sold her milk at two pence the quart, and after hearing upon 

 landing a sermon upon extortion, went distracted." 



The races of cattle existing in England at the period of the 

 settlement of this country by our Puritan ancestoi's comprised 

 not only the distinct classes of middle-horned, long-horned, the 

 Durhams or old Shorthorns and the polled or no-horned cattle, 

 but grades or crosses from the best stock of Europe, including 

 the Dutch and Alderney or Channel Island cows, and cows from 

 Flanders, Normandy and Brittany, which were then noted for 

 the quality of their milk. Centuries prior to that period the 

 English made predatory escursions into France and adjacent 

 countries and brought back not only men to be ransomed, and 

 fair women to be wived, but cattle to be eaten and to adorn the 



