88 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. 



ordinary native cows of New England ; and if I were to-day 

 getting up a herd of cows merely for the purpose of producing 

 butter or milk, calculating the cost of those animals, and what 

 they would give the year round, I apprehend I might go further 

 and fare a great deal worse than to select fine animals from our 

 native stock. But, gentlemen, the great difficulty about our 

 native stock is that there is no confidence to be placed in their 

 ofispring. You can have no certainty that the children of these 

 dams will equal in any respect the dams themselves ; and there- 

 fore, in a few years, if that system should be kept up, we should 

 run out of good animals. We cannot continue to have good 

 animals in the country unless we replace them by cows from 

 imported stock. 



In this section of the State, our habits, following our inter- 

 ests, are a little different from those of farmers in the other 

 parts of the State, where the doctor and our other friends are 

 living. We have not, until lately, bred cows for the purpose 

 only of producing milk. That is a business into which only a 

 portion of the inhabitants of Berkshire have entered. The 

 milk that goes down the Housatonic Railroad to New York is 

 received with as much favor as the milk from any other part of 

 the country, if not more ; and our farmers, from Lanesborough 

 all down the Housatonic Valley, are finding it one of the most 

 profitable employments in which they can engage ; and farmers 

 who want to engage in that branch of business cannot do better 

 than have the class of cows to which my friend Loring referred. 

 I apprehend there is no better class of cows than those that 

 have an infusion of Ayrshire blood in them for producing milk. 

 But some of us are so situated, either from the condition of our 

 farms, or from being occupied with business outside the matter 

 of farming, that we want to carry it on so as not to be driven 

 to the necessity of transporting our milk to the depot every day. 

 Therefore we are engaged in the production of butter and beef ; 

 and I apprehend, with all due deference to these gentlemen, 

 that we cannot get from Ayrshire cows as good quality of but- 

 ter as from half-breed Durhams, or as we can from our Jerseys ; 

 and therefore we find upon the hills of Berkshire that the most 

 profitable animals we can breed are the Shorthorns, or their 

 progeny, or other half-breeds, the progeny of native cows, mated 

 with a thoroughbred Durham bull. We find this profitable, 



