200 The Agricultural Features of the Paris Exhibition. 
breeds which are perhaps valued in particular districts as good 
workers, as being easily kept, hardy and docile, and perhaps 
also, in some cases, as being lair producers of milk and butter, 
but which as butchers' or beef-yielding animals are next to 
worthless, or, at any rate, are of a very inferior description. 
There were too many narrow frames, flat ribs, long legs, light 
waists, scooped quarters, weak backs, hanging dewlaps, deficient 
flanks ; and too much bone and too little flesh ; in short, too 
many " scraggy " animals. 
Doubtless it is desirable, indeed essential, that a country 
possessing such variety of soil and climate as France should 
embrace several different breeds of cattle, so that each particular 
district might be stocked with the race or sub-race best adapted to 
its peculiarities. There can be little doubt, however, that this 
idea has been carried too far in France. It has been followed to 
the loss of all concerned, first the farmers themselves, and then the 
nation at large. W e should say that at least one-third of those 
races and sub-races of cattle exhibited in the " Home Division," 
and mentioned in the list on p. 199, are not worthy of the care and 
attention of the farmer, nor are they the cheapest produce any 
country could raise ; and they could hardly be regarded, in any 
sense of the term, as profitable farm animals. It is claimed for 
each of these inferior breeds that it has some particular and ex- 
ceptional qualifications which recommend it to the attention of 
farmers of certain districts ; that it is well suited for light farm 
work ; that it will live on food upon which few other breeds 
would survive ; that it gives a good supply of excellent milk ; that 
it requires ver}- little attention, no housing and no herding. All 
this may be true so far ; but if these special services can be got, 
even in a modified degree, out of cattle of much superior merit, 
why cover even a poor country with those ill-shaped unprofit- 
able creatures, whose value as butchers' beasts — the natural and 
proper end of all cattle — is scarcely worth reckoning ? France 
might weed out one-third of its numerous breeds of cattle, and 
still have its farm work as well attended to as now, its varieties 
of soil and climate as well suited, and at the same time have its 
yield of beef increased twofold. As a rule, it is undeniably bad 
farming, therefore bad economy, to breed and keep cattle which 
are useful only for their milking or working properties, inasmuch 
as these properties are obtainable in a very high degree in breeds 
which are also valuable as beef-producers. In the greater part 
of France, indeed in the whole nation, with the exception of 
Maine, and parts of Anjou, and of Eastern Brittany, it is stated 
that under the present system of farming the first and primary 
objects for which cattle are kept are milk and labour. Making 
all due allowances for the peculiarities of the country, this is 
