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foundest students of agriculture and of its best practical 

 farmers. Never did the crops of that well cultivated island 

 perform their completest service in feeding its people, un- 

 til the cattle were brought to the most profitable shape and 

 quality for feeding, Her wisest men have felt the import- 

 ance of this matter. Her statesmen have set ours a good 

 example, an example not forgotten by our Websters and 

 Clays, when they colonized the farms at Marshfield and 

 Ashland with the choicest breeds of cattle, as of practical 

 service to their countrymen. 



The researches of science into the questions of animal 

 life, as manifested in the various forms adapted to different 

 purposes, are also full of interest and profit. That quality 

 best fitted for fattening or for the dairy, that shape most 

 appropriate to feed or to work, may be, aye, has been, 

 established with almost unerring accuracy for the benefit 

 of the family which keeps a single cow, as well as of the 

 herdsman whose pastures are the warm and teeming val- 

 leys of the "West, and of the New England farmer, whose 

 muscles have grown rigid in the heavy toil of procuring 

 and storing food for his dairy herd. We are taught, more- 

 over, to feed by chemical laws, and olein, albumen, sugar, 

 starch, woody fibre, fatty matter, mineral matter, and moist- 

 ure, are parceled out in the varieties of food with the ac- 

 curacy of mathematics, and with proper instructions in the 

 business of producing butter, cheese, and milk, or beef. 



In order that you may understand the many and various 

 ways in which cattle are connected with the wants and arts 

 of life, and the depth to which science may go in its ex- 

 plorations, I beg leave to read to you an extract from a let- 

 ter addressed to myself by that wonderful example of mod- 

 .est wisdom, and patient application, and profound knowl- 



