TjHE STOCK ON OUR FARMS. 31 



Massachusetts, I find also an infusion of foreign blood, brought 

 here, and planted on our soil for the special purpose of estab- 

 lisliing a dairy stock. When, on the other hand, I go to Ken- 

 tucky and admire her herds of beef cattle revelling in the rich 

 blue grass pastures of that State, I find'that her farmers availed 

 themselves of the patient and long continued efforts of beef- 

 breeders abroad, as the foundation of their work. In the dairy 

 herds of Vermont may be traced the strains of the Ayrsliire and 

 Short-horn blood, which have entered the State from the Scotch 

 farmers on the north, and from the enterprise of Massachusetts 

 on the south. It is by the same process that improvements in 

 our cattle have been made throughout our country. And the 

 reason is this : Having no specific stock of our own, no stock 

 devoted to any special purpose, we have been obliged to look 

 elsewhere for it. Half a century ago it would have been almost, 

 impossible to have discovered what the neat stock of New Eng- 

 land was intended for, whether for beef, or the dairy, or for the 

 simple purpose of consuming the produce of our farms, or for 

 all these objects combined. The whole system of breeding — in 

 fact, the whole community of our cattle was in utter chaos and 

 confusion, out of which no man considered it possible to bring 

 order. Accidental importations of valuable animals soon began 

 to produce a very marked effect. And observing farmers soon 

 found that size, symmetry, adaptation to any peculiar want or 

 purpose could be obtained by a judicious selection of pure blood. 

 A little herd of Devons, for instance, whose lineage commenced 

 with the early days of agriculture in England, was found to give 

 new vigor and style and increased value to the stock of the neigh- 

 borhood into which they were imported. A few stray animals 

 from the Channel Islands or the north of France, would leave a 

 new type and a somewhat improved one too, in the region 

 where they happened to land. The marked effect of Durhams, 

 as they were then called, and in later years, of Ayrshires, of 

 Galloways, and Holsteins, and Herefords, was so evident, that 

 even the most careless farmer became anxious to avail himself 

 of the improvement. For he found in the confusion of shapes, 

 and sizes, and colors by which he was surrounded, that " blood 

 will tell," and that an animal intended for a specific purpose 

 possessed qualities and powers unknown to any mere accident. 

 The old-fashioned Yorkshire cow, the great cow of the London 



