12 



ADDRESS OF MK. LORING. 



the wise and sagacious Eoman, was asked " what was 

 the most assured profit raising out of land ?" made the 

 answer— ^^ To feed well." Being asked again^ "what 

 was the next ?" he answered — " To feed with modera- 

 tion." And we can easily imagine the contrast which 

 exists between that aboriginal production of food, which 

 the sinewy savage practices as he pursues the still more 

 sinewy cattle across the plain, and even the first dawn 

 of domestication in the management of animals — and 

 the still greater contrast which exists between the wild 

 and flying drover of the pampas, and that calm and 

 solid and imperturbable specimen of humanity, who 

 winds his placid way from the valley of the Tees to 

 Smithfield market, realizing as he follows his rolling and 

 wallowing Short-horns, the truth of the saying '^ who 

 drives fat oxen should himself be fat." There is a lono- 

 interval between " the five hundred yoke of oxen" of 

 Job, and the stupendous breeds which graze upon the 

 fat pastures of England, bred and reared by rule into 

 an exact estimate of the cost of each " pound of flesh." 

 And to us- who are engaged in farming among all the 

 modern improvements, it is a matter of special interest 

 to know the processes by which the present breeds and 

 races of cattle have been brought to their existing 

 perfection, and how they can be preserved in their 

 condition. An Ayrshire cow, and a Short-horn bullock, 

 are by no means the result of accident. They have 

 been produced by the application of the highest and 

 most intelligent skill, at the hands of the Bakewells and 

 Parkeses and Mickles and Coolings, under whose 'treat- 

 ment, as has-been truly said, the "long-legged, slab- 

 sided, ill-bred oxen^ are metamorphosed into small-boned, 



