182 MASSACHUSETTS AGRICULTURE. 



country can be paid in about three years out of the milk-pails 

 of the United States alone ? 



There are farmers who undertake to keep cows, and neither 

 feed them well nor house them well. To such it makes but 

 little difference whether they have Ayrshires or Alderneys, na- 

 tives or grades ; they will have a lot of poor cows, let them 

 come from what stock they may. A man who keeps more cows 

 than he can feed, who has a dirty and ill-ventilated stable, will 

 not only have sickly cows, but his milk will be rank and strong, 

 his butter bad, and his cheese worse. Dirt, except when scat- 

 tered on a man's pastures, never produced a farthing to a 

 farmer. There is no economy in dirt. The good farmer keeps 

 no more cows than he can feed well. If you go about the 

 State, you will find poor cows and poor farmers. But the poor 

 farmer is altogether the poorer of the two. A poor farmer will 

 make a good cow into a poor one, almost as by miracle ; while, 

 on the other hand, a good farmer will make a very fair cow from 

 a poor one, or fat her at once for the shambles. If poor farmers 

 could be disposed of in some such summary way, it would be a 

 blessing to the country and a day of jubilee to the cows. 



A man that will starve or abuse such a mild, beautiful, for- 

 bearing and Christian animal as a cow, is fit only for the lone- 

 liness of the desert. Even when she is kicked and sworn at 

 and half fed, and, when maternal affection is most strong, we 

 take from her her first-born, that she would like to lick and 

 ramble about the green pastures with, so that we may make 

 money from her yield of milk, she still turns up her mild eye 

 in calm resignation, and goes uncomplaining to her poor and 

 slovenly shelter, without a murmur or a look of reproach. 

 What human beast would submit uncomplainingly to such a 

 fate ? E. M. Gardner, Cliairman. 



SHEEP. 



MARTHA'S VINEYARD. 



From the Report of the Committee. 

 The merits of the several breeds of sheep with their crosses 

 having been ably treated by the Committee for 1868, it is only 



