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milkers, but she failed entirely in transmitting the virtues 

 of her ancestors. And then what must have been the 

 character of New England dairy stock as an average, when 

 a cow, giving 17 quarts of milk per day, and making 484^ 

 pounds of butter in a year won an imperishable immor- 

 tality in the history of extraordinary cows ! "Whatever it 

 may have been then, we know too well what it is now. 

 There is no prevailing type about it. Long-horns, and 

 Short-horns, and no horns ; straight backs and crooked ; 

 shoulders as compact as those of a Suffolk pig, and 

 shoulders as loose and coarse as the forequarters of a drom- 

 edary ; fine silky hair, and hair as coarse as bristles ; the 

 feel of an air-tight stove, and skins as soft and elastic as 

 wash leather ; a heap of offal on the one hand, and that 

 superabundance of flesh nicknamed "sandwich" on the 

 other ; pocket editions of cows, and huge folios of oxen 

 grazing side by side in the same family ; cows that will 

 give milk the year round, and cows that go dry four or 

 six months out of the twelve, both of one parentage ; these 

 constitute the "old red cattle" of New England, which 

 are recommended to our farmers for their special care and 

 attention. There are meritorious animals among them, 

 it is true ; it would be extraordinary were there not. 

 But let any man undertake to collect a herd of twenty 

 cows of superior quality out of this great New England 

 family, and how long do you suppose it will take him to 

 do it ? As I have said, the good ones are the exceptions ; 

 they are the fortunate accidents ; and although there may 

 be in those animals — some of them — a basis for a good 

 native stock of our own, still I confess that I consider the 

 furthest remove from them the best position to gain with 

 any prospect of uniformity and superior excellence. The 

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