1871. 



NEW ENGLAND FARIVEER. 



587 



Now, if climate and food have made all the 

 difference in the human family, why not in the 

 brutes ? If throuirh a , long course of years 

 the inhabitants of a certain j)ortion of our 

 globe have had certain characteristics stamped 

 upon them that fit them for the localities in 

 which they are placed, why attempt to sup- 

 plant them with a race totally unfit for the lo- 

 cality ? As, for instance, to attempt to raise 

 the fat and rubicund Englishman amid the 

 eternal snows of Greenland. 



I certainly would not object to the importa- 

 tion and breeding, by gentlemen of means, 

 of these foreign cattle. Those men of wealth 

 who can afford to sink hundreds or thousands 

 of dollars yearly in the embellishment of their 

 farms, are not to be blamed for wishing to 

 have these sleek looking animals about their 

 premises. 



One word as to the value of these pure 

 bloods as milkers. I am engaged in making 

 milk for the market. Many of my cows are 

 picked up from the hills and valleys of New 

 Hampshire, Vermont and Maine, and yet I 

 have sometimes compared notes with Dr. Lor- 

 ing's Ayrshires, and if I am not mistaken, I 

 have generally been ahead of him in the 

 amount of milk per cow. 



One word as to those herd books. If I am 

 not mistaken, any man can get an animal enter- 

 ed in them by paying one dollar. Now if a man 

 would like to raise the price of an animal from 

 $25 to perliaps $200 or $300 or $500, is there 

 not a temptation to attempt it by the payment 

 of one dollar ? And yet it is laid down as 

 good authority, if the animal can be found in 

 the book, that it is pure. Now if it is a fact 

 that the mass of farmers don't know what is 

 for their interest ; that the animals that have 

 been bred on the soil for two hundred years 

 are unfit for the farm, and ought to be swept 

 out of the way by legislative enactment, and 

 that pampered foreigners and their progeny 

 alone are to be the recipients of public favor, 

 then it seems to me that some standard of 

 excellence should be agreed upon ; more espe- 

 cially if, as asserted by Mr. Goodman, that 

 we "can, by a proper selection, produce just 

 such results as we desire." I say there should 

 be some standard adopted, and a note made of 

 all that fall short, as well as of those that at- 

 tain to it, so that we may know what the 

 cha'ctes are of obtaining animals of superior 

 excellence from the high-bred and high-fed 

 breeds. 



Thus, brother farmers, I have endeavored 

 to point out a few of the reasons why our na- 

 tive stock should not be pushed out of the way 

 to make room for these interlopers. I know 

 I have not done justice to the subject, accords 

 ing to my ideas of it, for it wouli take a vol- 

 ume to do so . I do not believe it was the inten- 

 tion of the founders of our agricultural so- 

 cieties that such a state of things should ever 

 take place. I believe it was their intention to 

 encourage true excellence wherever found. 



And while I know that no intelligent farmer 

 would, for one moment, object to these '^pure 

 bloods" receiving their due share of public fa- 

 vor, I do object,— and I feel that every prac- 

 tical farmer should protest against things being 

 so manipulated as to favor exclusively the 

 breeders of these fancy cattle, when their 

 chief claim to favor rests upon that fact, and 

 that alone too, that their names can be traced 

 in the book of pedigree to some foreign im- 

 portation. J. L. HUBBAKD. 

 Peahody, Mass., Jnly 28, 1871. 



Remakks. — A written pedigree is, we sup- 

 pose, required of all applicants for a herd- 

 book record — a pedigree that traces the de- 

 scent of the animal to be entered to some 

 herd-book animal. 



For the New England Farmer. 

 SUNAPEE LAKE. 

 Sunapee Lake is situated in the towns of 

 Newbury, New London and Sunapee, N. H., 

 and is about 32 miles northwest of Concord. 

 It is a beautiful sheet of pure, clear water, 10 

 miles long and from 1 to 3 miles wide, and is 

 more than 1000 miles above the level of the 

 sea. It is on the height of land between the 

 Connecticut and Merrimac rivers. It is the 

 reservoir of., numerous brooks and rivers flow- 

 ing from the above named towns, and the 

 source of Sugar River, a wild rapid stream, 

 which flows through Sunapee, Newport, and 

 Claremont, into the Connecticut River. 



The extension of the Concord and Clare- 

 mont Railroad, which is now building, passes 

 along the western shore for two miles, and af- 

 fords to the traveller one of the most pleasing 

 prospects New Hampshire scenery. On one 

 side are the clear sparkling waters of the 

 Lake, green pastures, fine farms and wood- 

 lands sloping back from its farther shore ; on 

 the other, the everlasting Sunapee Mountain, 

 whose base comes to the very edge of the 

 lake, and whose summit towers 1500 feet 

 above. On the one side, nature appears in its 

 wildest grandeur ; on the other, it is softened 

 by clear water, green fields of waving grain 

 and grazing herds. 



Near the lake is the summit, or the highest 

 point of the railroad between Concord and 

 Claremont, and consists of solid granite, 

 through which a cut of "500 feet in length arid 

 50 feet in depth had to be made. We wit- 

 nessed, at the time of our visit, the largest 

 blast through the whole progress of the work. 

 There were six thirteen-feet holes charged 

 with glycerine and all ignited at the instant by 

 means of a galvanic battery. We had a fine 

 view from a hill, fifty rods distant, and when 

 the electric spark was applied it seemed as if 

 the whole hill was rising up. The air was 

 filled with huge fragments of rock; then 

 came the deep rumbling crash, as if an earth- 



