102 MASSACHUSETTS AGRICULTURE., 



two quarts per day, which is continued to them till nearly the 

 time for taking them into the barn. This is my usual system, 

 and the one I prefer ; but this fall my milkman has been so 

 pressing for all the milk I could spare, that I have rather 

 stinted my calves, which have had nothing but pasture since 

 the twenty-fourth of July. 



I cannot state the precise quantity of butter made from my 

 cows in one week, as I have given my milkman the privilege (of 

 which he has fully availed himself,) of using me as a reserve, 

 and taking from one to ten cans a day, at a day's notice. 



The superior qualities I claim for my herd, are, a more than 

 average yield of milk and butter, good, healthy constitutions, 

 and kind and docile tempers ; and lastly, that they are well 

 calculated, with judicious care in the selection of a bull, to pro- 

 duce dairy stock, " native and to the manor born," and 

 " adapted to the peculiaries of soil, climate and physical con- 

 formations of Middlesex County." The sentences marked as 

 quotations were appropriated as being peculiarly expressive, 

 from Mr. Lawson's report in 1862, and from this and other 

 writings of that gentleman ; and also from remarks of Messrs. 

 Flint, Goodale and others. 



I have been led to think it may not only be interesting but 

 profitable, to endeavor by judicious management aud without 

 any unprofitable outlay, to assist in producing a Middlesex 

 breed of cows equal to the world-renowned Ayrshire, Hereford, 

 Durham and the Channel Islands. My theory, at starting, is a 

 very old one, and is, simply, that a good milker, descended from 

 a good milker, and sired by a pure-bred bull of a good milking 

 stock, will, if put to a pure-bred bull of the same or another 

 good milking race, produce calves of which the heifers will in 

 all probability inherit the excellencies of their mother ; and 

 that the longer any good qualities can be shown to have existed 

 in both lines of ancestry without deviations, the more cer- 

 tainty may we expect such qualities to be transmitted to each 

 successive generation. 



Minor matters, such as color, size, form, horns, &c., are mere 

 matters of fancy, and each will endeavor to please his own taste ; 

 still, by degrees, opinions will become more unanimous, as the 

 best cattle will, even in these matters, eventually set the fashion. 

 I need scarcely add that my own judgment, — confirmed by the 



