17 



the patient and long-continued efforts of breeders abroad 

 as the foundation of their work. In the dairy herds of 

 Vermont may be traced the strains of Ayrshire and Short- 

 horn bloods which have entered the State from the Scotch 

 formers in the Forth, and from the enterprise of Massa- 

 chusetts in 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 our special purpose, 

 we have been obliged to look elsewhere for it. Haifa 

 century ago, it would have been almost impossible to have 

 discovered what the neat stock of New England was in- 

 tended for, whether for beef or the dairy, or for the sim- 

 ple 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 con- 

 sidered it possible to bring order. Accidental importa- 

 tions of animals soon began to produce a very marked 

 effect, and observing farmers soon found that size, sym- 

 metry, adaptation to an}' peculiar want or purpose could 

 be obtained by a periodical selection of pure blood. A 

 little herd of Devons, for instance, whose lineage com- 

 menced with the early days of agriculture in England, 

 was found to give new vigor, and style, and increased 

 value to the stock in the neighborhood 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 evi- 



