PREFACE 



BY THE AMERICAN EDITOR. 



♦ 



Although that portion of the matter, here oJFered to American farmers, which was traaslated 

 for and originally published in the Fakmeks' Libeart, might well be considered as worth the 

 price of this volume, the Publishers have desired to render the work move acceptable and useful, 

 by the addition of brief Introductory Sketches, descriptive of various Races of Cattle, as well as 

 of Dairy Management, and of some of the Diseases to which Comt and Calves are particularly 

 liable. 



Most of these additions have been derived from Chambers's Information for the People ; 

 selected for the reason that, while they are deemed by the American Editor to be, generally, judi- 

 cious and profound, the style is so plain and practical that " he who runs may read "and under- 

 stand them. Remarks have been added by the Editor of the Farmers' Library, where it was 

 supposed they might be needed to adapt the work more perfectly to the use of American 

 readers. 



It has been truly observed that the most remarkable of all the changes and meliorations efiected 

 in cattle by the potent influence of domestication, the most marked improvement has been in the 

 capacity of the Cow for giving milk. How much may not that capacity be enhanced now, hy 

 . close attention to the milk-bearing signs or " escutcheons" so minutely described by M. Gueson ? 



By selecting for breeding stock, from generation to generation, such only as display these infal- 

 lible indications, and condemning to the knife all that are devoid of them— supposing the system 

 to he unerring as it has been pronounced by successive Committees appointed to investigate it — 

 what is to prevent the establishment of a race as uniform and remarkable for excellence at the 

 pail as the Devon Ox is for the yoke, or the courser of high-bred eastern extraction for the turf? 

 and that, tooj without recurrence to importation-— seeing that, among our " country cows," individ- 

 uals have been found equal, in yield of milk and butter, to any to be traced in the Herd-Book ? — 

 Instance the Cream-pot Breed, built up hy Col. Jacques, of Charlestown, Mass. whose calves arc 

 bespoken at $100 ; the celebrated middle-sized Oak's Cow, of Danvers, that gave, on evidence sat- 

 isfactory to the Mass. Ag. Society, 484 pounds of butter from the 5th of April to the 25th of Sep- 

 tember, and, move recently, the wonderful Prize Cow, Kaatskill, property of Mr. Donalsob, 

 of Blithe wood. New- York, which received the prize of the New- York State Agricultural Society, 

 at Poughkeepsie, in 1844, on satisfactory evidence that she " yielded, when kept on grass only, 

 38| quarts of milk per day, and that, from the milk given by her in two days, C^ pounds of butter 

 were made — being at the rate of S2J pounds per week." 



When such cases turn up hy chance, why, we repeat, may not a Breed of deep milkers be es- 

 talliahed and relied upon as confidently as it is known that "like produces like" ? After all, 



