260 MASSACHUSETTS AGRICULTURE. 



The question may be, and often is, asked, " Why not begin 

 with our native cattle, and, by careful and skilful breeding, rear 

 a breed of natives which shall equal any foreign breed ? It is 

 acknowledged that our cattle are good : why not bring them up 

 to an equality even with short-horns ? Can we not do what 

 others have done ? " 



We are doubtless a great people, we Yankees ; but we should 

 hardly give evidence of our sagacity, if, confining ourselves to 

 native cattle, we should begin now to create a new breed. 

 True, our successors might, a century hence, point with pride 

 to their thorough-bred " Native Americans ; " but, while glory- 

 ing in the excellence of the cattle, they would be apt to doubt 

 the acuteness of their Know Nothing ancestors, who had neg- 

 lected to avail themselves of the experience, knowledge, and 

 practical results of generations of breeders, who had devoted 

 themselves to the creation and improvement of breeds of cattle 

 that in 1850 equalled, if not surpassed, the Native Americans 

 of a century later. 



The fact is, the English have been for centuries a stock- 

 breeding people, and have brought their cattle, horses, sheep, 

 swine, and other domestic animals to a high degree of perfec- 

 tion. It is for us to avail ourselves of their experience, and 

 ingraft upon our own stock the scions of their improved culture. 



Perhaps a brief consideration of the merits and history of 

 some of the prominent breeds of cattle — especially of those 

 likely to come under the observation of the farmers of Bris- 

 tol — may be interesting and serviceable to those who have not 

 heretofore given much attention to the subject. 



First, let us pass in review our native cattle. These can 

 hardly be called a breed, presenting as they do so few marks 

 of breeding, so great a diversity in appearance and quality, and 

 possessing so little of that power of begetting their own like- 

 ness which is inseparable from animals really well bred. Our 

 native cattle arc not indigenous to the soil, but arc descended 

 from animals brought to America by the early settlers. As a 

 large proportion of the earlier immigrants were from Devon- 

 shire and the south of England, where the Devon cattle were 

 even then popular, and where that breed had been long estab- 

 lished, it was doubtless from that breed that the earlier cattle 



