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the butter dairy. Now bulls of this Ayrshire and Guernsey crop 

 could, I presume, be imported to Massachusetts, registered in the 

 Ayrshire Herd book, and awarded premiums at our County 

 Fairs. But if a Massachusetts farmer breeds a bull from a Jer- 

 sey or Guernsey or his Ayrshires or Shorthorns, he cannot ex- 

 hibit him for premiums, although the animal may, both from his 

 individual character and by virtue of his ancestry, be eminently 

 qualified to beget the very stock which his owner and his own- 

 ers neighbors need. 



Now this appears to me to be all wrong. What the intelligent 

 farmer means by a well-bred bull, is one whose ancestors, for 

 many generations, have excelled in those properties which he 

 wishes to maintain in his stock ; and he is justified in thinking 

 that the places to find such an animal is in a community where 

 cattle are bred and raised under the same conditions and for the 

 same purposes that he has in view. No two sections are subject 

 to the same conditions of climate, pastijrage and markets ; and 

 certainly no one breed of cattle is so well suited to the needs and 

 circumstances of Hampshire County as the cattle which can be 

 and are produced by skillful mixture of the existing breeds, or 

 by judicious selection and well considered mating of superior 

 animals, without regard to breed. 



I want to be understood that I do not underrate the merits of 

 the so-called throughbred cattle, nor the value of herd books and 

 registries for the preservation of pedigrees; but I claim that 

 Farmers and not Fanciers have developed and fostered the practi- 

 cal qualities for which the different breeds are valued and celebra- 

 ted ; and that when a breed has been established, and its pedigrees 

 have been recorded in a herd book, there is danger that consti- 

 tutional vigor and practical excellence will be sacrificed to in- 

 breeding and breeding for fancy points and for sale. 



Above all I claim that the Farmers of Hampshire county are 

 the best judges of their own needs and circumstances : and, as I 

 am assured that I am expressing the views of many experienced 

 and sucessful farmers, including, as I believe, a large majority of 

 the members of this Society, I venture to suggest that, subject, to 

 the consent hi the Board of Agriculture the rule condemning the 

 use of grade bulls shall be repealed; and that, in addition to the 



