PREFACE 

 BY THE AMERICAN EDITOR. 



Although that portion of tbe matter, here offered to American fiumere, which was translated 

 for and originally published in the Farmers' Librart, might well be considered as worth the 

 price of this volnme, the Fublishers have desired to render the work more acceptable and nsefnl, 

 by the addition of brief Introdncb)^' Sketches, descriptive of varions Baces of Cattle, as well as 

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

 liable. 



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

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

 cions 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 effected 

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

 eapaiity of the Cow for giving mil/c. How much may not that capacity be enhanced now, by 

 close attention to the milk-bearing signs or " escutcheons" so minutely described by M. Guenon 1 



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 be unerring as it has been pronounced by successive Committees appcinted 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 7 

 and that, too, 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 1 — 

 Instance the Cream-pot Breed, built up by 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 2oth of Sep- 

 tember , and, more recently, the wonderful Prize Cow, Kaatskill, property of Mr. Donalson, 

 of Blithewood, New-York, which received the prize of the New-York State Agiicnltural Society, 

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

 38j quarts of milk per day, and that, from the milk given by her in two days, 6) pounds of butter 

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



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

 tablisUd and relied upon as confidently as it is known that " like produces like" ? After all. 



