SECRETARY'S REPORT. 129 



stone to build up a large, bony frame, and tbat you must do 

 this artificially, where nature does not provide the cattle with a 

 sufficient amount of lime in the waters from which they drink, 

 and in the rocks against which they rub themselves, to make 

 their bones. With us, in the Jura, or in the canton Freiburg, 

 in the Alps, which is a limestone country, every pail of water 

 contains a large quantity of lime in solution, and every cow 

 that drinks, drinks in bones, or at least lime, with which to 

 make bones. That lime we must supply. 



Now, with reference to breeding. And here breeding comes 

 in for a share in making these good kinds or poor kinds of 

 cattle. Let us examine what the native animal is ; — and again 

 I say, that when you have these principles before you, I know 

 that, in a very short time, whatever value they have will be 

 applied to the promotion of agricultural improvement. I 

 believe that all our discussions are a little too loose ; that we 

 don't understand all the elements of the question sufficiently to 

 know by numerical value what there is in one and what there 

 is in the other proposition that is discussed. I hear the charac- 

 teristics of a dairy cow spoken of in contrast with those of a 

 beef animal ; but I want to know what there is that makes up 

 two such different animals. Differences in form have been 

 alluded to, and differences in situation have been alluded to 

 also, and these ought to be considered separately ; but there are 

 differences in substance of which I have heard nothing said. I 

 should like to ascertain — and for that experiments must be 

 made which we have not on hand — what is the percentage of 

 bone in the best animal to fatten or to raise for beef, what the 

 percentage of skin, of horn, of hoof, of blood, of lymph, of liver, 

 which goes to make up the sum total of the weight of the ani- 

 mal, and how far there is a difference in those respects between 

 the different kinds of cattle which we raise. No work gives us 

 these facts yet ; but now there is growing up in Cambridge a 

 Museum of Comparative Zoology, in which there is a special 

 department devoted to domestic animals, and I am trying to 

 bring together there, to begin with, skeletons of the different 

 varieties of animals which we raise. I have not been able to 

 get, thus far, any but the- common kinds of these animals, with 

 the exception of a few valuable horses, known as distinguished 

 trotters ; but I should like to obtain for that Museum animals, 



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