700 = 434 
Dairy Farming. 
One more paragraph on each of these four points : — 
1. Trusting to our insular position, and resolute in an instin 
tive personal independence which finds expression in the adaj 
that " every Englishman's house is his castle," we have not, ti 
lately, given our Government the power to deal with catt 
disease as it is dealt with in Continental countries. T] 
measure, however, which is now on the point of enactme: 
will both protect us from the importation of foreign diseases, 
cattle-plague, pleuro-pneumonia, and foot-and-mouth diseas 
which have been (the first occasionally, and the two last, mo 
constantly), since their first importation, the very bane of Engli; 
dairy farming ; and it will give the equally necessary power 
restrict or altogether forbid that movement of cattle to and fro 
an infected district, on which the spreading of disease depend 
The cultivation of breeding cattle, and with it the extensic 
of our dairy husbandry, which has been checked of late years 1 
the risks of these diseases, may, it is hoped, now be mo 
actively resumed. 
2. Excepting only the Shorthorns which are spreading ever 
where, the selection of the breeds of cattle to be cultivated h 
been already accomplished in the several counties to which th 
belong. The Ayrshire, Devon, Hereford, Norfolk, Polled Angi 
Galloway, and other breeds are localised, and are fitted by ada 
tation during many generations to the circumstances of th( 
several localities. I should have mentioned under this he. 
that large numbers of the Dutch black-and-white cows are nc 
seen in every dairy for the milk-supply around London. Th 
are good milch-cows, but inferior to the Shorthorns in th 
aptitude to lay on flesh when milking is over, on which t 
profits of a London dairy very largely depend. Although, ho | 
ever, the breed of any locality is pretty generally fixed, there 
a continual improvement of each breed in progress. Contini 
effort is made by the selection of bulls of known families with^ 
each breed to maintain the qualities that are most desired in t < 
offspring. Especially is this true of Shorthorns, of which the 
are specific strains and families known respecti,vely for the 
milking qualities and for their meat-producing aptitude. 0 
ordinary dairy farmers are more and more in the habit 
attending the great spring sales of Shorthorn bulls at Dubl 
and at Birmingham, and elsewhere, to choose their purchas 
often at high prices, with especial reference to the known histc 
of the families to which they belong. 
3. The ordinary management of the herd in our dairy d 
tricts — excepting for the milk supply, where quantity is t 
only consideration, and where much more liberal feeding 
resorted to — consists in letting cows graze in the summer, a 
4b 
