Proceedixgs of the Farmers' Club. 473 



fanciful name, but when the pretension is coupled with it that they 

 are Cheshire, and descended from hogs imported from Cheshire, Eng- 

 land, then the name is very improper. It would be better to call 

 them Jefferson county, and be truthful and consistent, and follow the 

 example of Chester, county, Pennsylvania, as they have done with 

 their pigs, the Chester county whites. I do not believe any connec- 

 tion can be shown between the so-called Cheshires and any hog in 

 Cheshire, England. The breeders of Jefferson county have done a 

 good thing, and they need not be ashamed to give their county the 

 credit of it." I think Mr. Curtis must have received his informa- 

 tion from breeders in the south part of this coimty, who breed by 

 crossing the Yorkshire with the improved native hogs, and sell their 

 pigs under the name of Jefferson coimty breed ; whereas the original 

 breeders still adhere to the name of " improved Cheshires," the name 

 given to them at the State fair held in Utica, New York, in 1863. 

 As to the relation this breed has to the Cheshires of England, the 

 public can judge by the statement I have from T. T. Cavanaugh, of 

 Watertown, New York, who is the originator of the improved Che- 

 shire hogs : " Some fifteen or eighteen years ago (the exact date can- 

 not be readily ascertained) Mark Rice, of this county, bought a boar 

 pig of Mr. Woolford, of Albany, New York. Mr. Woolford said 

 this pig was from a pair of hogs he imported from Cheshire, Eng- 

 land. Mr. Rice crossed this pig with his native hogs, breeding in for 

 a few years, which made a great improvement in them." In 1860 

 Mr. Cavanaugh bought a boar pig from the stock of Mark Rice that 

 he crossed with a sow pig he bought of some dealers in stock, who 

 imported from Canada a sow that they called a Cheshire sow. From 

 this pair Mr. Cavanaugh raised one boar and two sow pigs. The 

 improved Cheshires are highly prized by breeders in the west and 

 south. Colonel F. D. Curtis, writing in the New York Republican 

 of the exhibition of swine at our last State fair, very truly states 

 that " some of the breeders of the Cheshire and Jefferson county 

 hogs are in danger of bringing that breed into disrepute by mixing 

 them with hogs of different characteristics and points and still adher- 

 ing to the name. In this way confusion arises, and a difference which 

 is noticeable and which begets disgust. A breed is a breed, and for 

 why ? Because they (the specimens) have characteristics which are 

 similar, and which are perpetuated from parents to progeny; the}- 

 become thoroughbred when their peculiarities are transmitted in the 

 blood without difference or change. This principle is obviously upset 

 when we see in the same litter of pigs some with upright ears — a 



