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The Massachusetts State Board of Agriculture has forbidden the 

 eucouragement by the Societies of grade bulls, and has done its best 

 to discourage their use by the farmers of the state. Now suppose 

 two farmers in the Valley, who each own a herd of good useful 

 dairy cows, want to breed a lot of calves to grow up into cows for 

 butter making and finally for profitable conversion into beef. One 

 of them loyally accepts the dictum of the Board, " Never breed from 

 a grade bull," and at some cost and inconvenience sets out to provide 

 himself with a thoroughbred. The Board only stipulates that the 

 bull shall be thoroughbred, but putting aside the temptation to take 

 the first that offers, our farmer is determined to proceed cautiously 

 and intelligently in quest of an animal suited to his purpose. His 

 first consideration will be to select from a good milking breed, but 

 even in this there is no general rule that can be absolutely depended 

 on. In the grazing breeds are numerous individuals and families 

 with superior milking capacity, and in the so-called milking breeds 

 there are still more which are deficient in this respect. Let us sup- 

 pose however that our loyal farmer decides on some one breed, as 

 best suited to his purpose and circumstances, and secures a bull 

 calf from a heifer with a satisfactory milking capacity. Fed and 

 treated as a well-bred and expensive animal should be, the calf thrives 

 and flourishes, and the loyal farmer thinks he has got a prize, and 

 perhaps he has, but at any rate he must take his chance again and 

 again. And sometime he will make a mistake, and what then? His 

 heifers as they come into milk will sicken and die of tubercular con- 

 sumption, or his cows will develop a tendency to abortion, milk fever, 

 or apoplex}' ; the milk will be deficient in quantity or quality or 

 both, and then the farmer will show his bull's pedigree to some one 

 who knows the breed, and he will be told that his misfortunes are not 

 accidental, but the inevitable result of breeding from ancestors known 

 to the initiated to be defective or worthless. 



The other faimer has bred Plymouth Rocks and Wyandottes and 

 knows the possibility as well as the difficulty of combining desirable 

 properties and breeding out defects ; he believes that he has got about 

 the class of cattle that suits him, but as there are degrees of merit, 

 he raises a bull calf from the best cow in his own or his neighbor's 

 herd. He has confidence this calf will not disgrace the mother, as 

 he knows the sire, and also the two grand sires and grand dams of 

 the calf ; and he also knows the kind of stock which for several gen- 

 erations the bulls of this family have begotten on difiTerent classes qf 



