254 MASSACHUSETTS AGRICULTURE. 



Scriptures, and of the interpretation thereof, foretelling, as it 

 did, future years of leanness and poverty. The sight of seven 

 kine coming up from the river side, " ill favored and lean 

 fleshed," might well be deemed, even by an uninspired sooth- 

 sayer, an augury of future years of misery to their owner, while 

 the sight of an equal number of our improved breeds would 

 afford equally satisfactory assurances that years of plenty and 

 domestic comforts were in store for their fortunate possessor 

 and his family. 



Your committee do not feel called upon in this report to 

 discuss the peculiar merits for dairy purposes of all the different 

 breeds of cattle, for the opinions of practical farmers are so 

 much at variance, and the influences of soil, location, and 

 feeding are so numerous, that it would be impossible for them 

 to recommend, with any degree of propriety, any one breed as 

 best for the dairy under all circumstances ; but they may be 

 allowed to protest against the continuance of that unthrifty and 

 suicidal policy which prevails upon too many farms, and which 

 in the very face of all the knowledge which has been derived 

 from the experience of such men as Colling and Bakewell in 

 the past, still persists in the propagation and rearing of inferior 

 cattle, and which, acting upon the principle that a calf of any 

 breed is a calf, and will in time become an ox or a cow, rescues 

 every year from the knife of the butcher a worthless progeny 

 of young animals, which can never be a credit or a source of 

 profit to the owners, or add to the aggregate wealth of the 

 State. 



With all the aids to improvement which at the present day 

 are in his possession, the New England farmer who realizes at 

 all the nobility and dignity of his vocation, ought to be ashamed 

 to devote himself only to the milking and rearing of ordinary 

 stock ; nay, more than this, he ought to be ashamed not to give 

 some little portion of his time, attention, and means, to its 

 improvement, by judicious crossings with the improved stock of 

 the country ; which, thanks to the public spirit and enterprise 

 of a few men in the community, and to the interest created by 

 this and kindred institutions, is now accessible to all. 



Tire good book tells us, that even in the olden time, men did 

 not expect to gather grapes of thorns, or figs of thistles ; but 

 some of our modern farmers would seem to be less wise than 



