THE DEVONS. 55 



pounds iu the winter. A good North Devon cow fats two 

 calves a year.' " Other favorable accounts are given, yet some 

 are different. They speak of a less quantity of milk given by 

 Devons, but the quality as remarkably rich. Count de Gourcy, 

 an intelli^nt French agriculturist, and traveler in England, 

 remarked that Mr. Bloomfield's Devon cows, on the estate of 

 Lord Leicester, in Norfolk, each averaged four pounds of butter 

 per week, the year round. 



It is to be regretted that English published accounts of the 

 dairy production of the Devons are so meager. "We have fuller 

 and more favorable accounts of them in America. Mr. George 

 Patterson, of Maryland, who, for many years has owned the 

 largest herd of pure bred Devons in the United States — some 

 seventy or eighty in number — remarked to the writer, when at 

 his farm in the year 1842, that his cows were better milkers, 

 and yielded more butter on an average than any other breed. 

 His stock is descended from some of the best animals of Mr. 

 Bloomfield, the principal breeder of the superior herd of the 

 Earl of Leicester, (both already noticed,) and since crossed by 

 occasional imported bulls from the same herd. Mr. Patterson 

 has always bred his cows with a special eye to their milking 

 properties, and in them and their descendants, in different parts 

 of the country, have been found many remarkable good milkers. 

 Other accounts, entered in our memoranda at the time, were 

 equally satisfactory. "We have good authority of some of them 

 yielding ten to twelve pounds of butter per week. 



Other breeders who have kept choice herds of Devons for 

 several years, have repeatedly assured us that they were superior 

 milkers. They have given 18, 20, and 22 quarts of milk per 

 day, for months after calving, under steady milking. 



Our own experience has been something in this line. "We 

 have kept thorough bred Devons thirty-four years — sometimes 

 as hich as twenty-five or thirty (not all milk cows) in number. 



