42 MILCH COWS. 



breed. Has anybody learned during that time whether it took 12 or 

 24 or 48 hours to obtain the 4 quarts of milk from that cow ? Have 

 we seen a Hne anywhere from which the least information could be 

 gained as to how much butter that or any other Devon cow has 

 produced in a year, or in a single week even ? Upon those points 

 our weekly monitor maintains a most ominous silence. Cattle 

 may sell better if one desirable quality, one point of excellence 

 can be so magnii&ed and made prominent as to over-shadow and 

 conceal a multitude of defects. When our teachers of agriculture 

 turn stock speculators, we cannot, and ought not, to expect them 

 to be free from the imperfections which attach to poor human nature. 

 Youatt, a British authority not to be questioned, in his work on 

 cattle, says : — " For the dairy the North Devons must be acknowl- 

 edged to be inferior to several other breeds. The milk is good, and 

 yields more than an average proportion of cream and butter, but it 

 is deficient in quantity." He furthermore says, " that its property 

 as a milker could not be improved without probable or certain detri- 

 ment to its grazing qualities." 



But we have still a better test of the estimation in which the 

 Devons are held for dairy purposes, both on this and the other side 

 of the water. A scale of the points of excellence of different 

 breeds of cattle, estabhshed years since in England, more recently 

 adopted, with few if any changes, in America, shows the real value 

 which the best judges (who, if prejudiced at all, are prejudiced in 

 their favor,) place upon the Devons and other Enghsh breeds, as 

 milch stock. This scale embraces one hundred points, and no ani- 

 mal, of course, attains perfection until it is entitled to the entire 

 hundred. To each part of the animal its real value has been as- 

 signed ; as, for instance, a deep round and faultless chest is entitled 

 to a certain number of points in the hundred, — say 15 — a faultless 

 head to 4, and so on. If the animal is deficient in any part, the 

 number of points at which that part is rated in the scale is to be 

 deducted from the hundred, in determining its merits. 



Now the Devon cow is so lightly esteemed for the dairy, both 

 here and at home, that the udder, whose shape and size we are apt 

 so carefully to criticise in a milch cow, is' rated in the established 

 scale as of the value of one point — while the horns and ears are 

 considered worth two points each, and the color of the nose and the 



