^^ Illinois State Dairymen's Association. 



350 lbs. of butter in one year or she can not stay on Coteau 

 Farm. Do you agree with me in my hatred of those fellows 

 that sell the other kind of stuff? I well remember when I said 

 similar things when I commenced institute work over twenty 

 years ago (and I did say some hard things). An agricultural 

 editor who lived in the city said to me, ''Mr. Gregg, if you do 

 not stop this kind of business we will break your head." I said, 

 ''You start in and break as fast as you have a mind but if I 

 have harder words to use then I am going to use them. What I 

 have learned has not come by guess from behind the editor's 

 desk but has come from hard knocks in connection with the 

 cows." 



My starting Point in Understanding Dairy Cattle Improvement. 



The greatest thinker of the 19th century was that man Dar- 

 win. I saw a short time ago the opinions of some of the leading 

 intellectual men of the world, giving in their judgment the man 

 who had done the most to start intellectual life in the world 

 during the past generation, and every one of them headed the 

 list with Darwin. I owe to him much that I have learned in 

 the improvement of dairy cattle, I will tell you some of the 

 principles that I obtained from him. Now I am going to discuss 

 this with reference to the law of life and will submit it to you 

 and as I go along I will dwell on it so you can feel the force of it. 

 Every form of life is continuously changing by reason of 

 envirorjment or surroundings. 



Every form of life, vegetable and animal, is continually 

 changing by that law of environment or surroundings. I wonder 

 how many caught the truth in that statement? You are think- 

 ing men. I got that thought thoroughly in my mind as I read 

 that man's book; then I began to observe. The best place in 

 the world for a man to grow mentality is on the farm where he 

 is not interfered with by many social duties, where he can take 

 the literature of the day, read it and think of the world about 

 him, observe and think, and the joy of it is better than the joy 

 of getting drunk ! So I began to think, observe and see. 



Now I Will Give a List of Some of the Things. 



Everything responds to that law. When I was a boy and 

 lived in old New England I used to go out and help get liberty 

 poles, i. e. flagstaffs. Where do you suppose that we found a 



