54 WORKING AND MILKING QUALITIES. 



Mason as being best capable of enduring the severity of 

 the climate and the hardships to which they were to be 

 subjected. However this may have been, they very 

 soon spread among the colonists of the Massachusetts 

 Bay, and have undoubtedly left their marks on the 

 stock of New England and the Middle States, which 

 exist to some extent even to the present day, mixed in 

 with an infinite multitude of crosses with the Dev- 

 ons, the Dutch cattle already alluded to, the black cattle 

 of Spain and Wales, and the long-horn and the short- 

 horn, most of which crosses were accidental, or due to 

 local circumstances or individual convenience. Many 

 of these cattle, the descendants of such crosses, are of 

 a very high order of merit, but to what particular cross 

 it is due it is impossible to say. They make generally 

 hardy, strong, and docile oxen, easily broken to the 

 yoke and quick to work, with a fair tendency to fatten 

 when well fed ; while the cows, though often ill-shaped, 

 are sometimes remarkably good milkers, especially as 

 regards the quantity they give. 



I have very often heard the best judges of stock say 

 that if they desired to select a dairy of cows for milk 

 for sale, they would go around and select cows com- 

 monly called native, rather than resort to pure-bred ani- 

 mals of any of the established breeds, and that they be- 

 lieved they should find such a dairy the most profitable. 



In color, the natives, made up as already indicated, 

 are exceedingly various. The old Denmarks, which to 

 a considerable extent laid the foundation of the stock 

 of Maine and New Hampshire, were light yellow. The 

 Dutch of New York and the Middle States were black 

 and white ; the Spanish and Welsh were generally 

 black ; the Devons, which are supposed to have laid the 

 foundation of the stock of some of the states, were red. 

 Crosses of the Denmark with the Spanish and Welsh 



