332 
REMARKS OK BREEDING. 
cows, every day, and makes it into cheese. I 
understand that he pays five cents a pound, and 
takes it fresh as soon as well drained. Mr. E. 
gays he can afford to pay that price. Cheese 
and butter are the staple exports of this county, 
and no grain-growing region, within my knowl- 
edge, can show so large a proportion of wealthy 
farmers, good farmhouses, good-looking and 
well-improved farms, and such a number of 
well-to-do-in-the-world people as Jefferson coun- 
ty. The women and children here take more 
interest in agricultural improvement and know 
more about it, than a majority of the men in 
some places. When you know the farmers' 
wives there, you will not be surprised to find 
such pretty girls and noble boys. Would you 
know the reason? They read. Yes sir, they 
read, and read agricultural papers, too. One 
handsome, intelligent boy, about fourteen 
years of age, came up to me just as I was leav- 
ing, and said, " Mr. Robinson, I should like to 
have you send me the Agriculturist for a year. 
Here is the money." That boy will make an 
intelligent, good man. The same boy had the 
sole management of a large family garden, the 
past summer. I need not tell you it was a 
good one. 
Jefferson-County Agricultural' Society. — I will 
tell you what fosters and keeps alive this spirit 
of improvement in this county. They have one 
of the oldest and one of the most active and ef- 
ficient agricultural societies in the state, and the 
society have a hall, or place of meeting, upwards 
of 200 feet long and 50 feet wide, capable of 
accommodating three thousand people. It was 
built by the funds of the society, and is em- 
phatically " the people's meeting house ;" for 
there, all large public meetings are held, besides 
the agi'icultural annual fairs. What other coun- 
ty will look to this one of the north for an exam- 
ple, and go and do likewise? 
In addition to the improved progress of agri- 
culture, manufacturing of cotton, wool, paper, 
flour, axes, and many other things flourish 
here in an equal degree. 
Plank Roads. — There are six of these valua- 
ble improvements leading out of Watertown, 
which is rising from the ashes of the great fire, 
like a phoenix in revivified plumage. 
Thin Soil. — Much land in this county lies up- 
on a flat surface of rock, so near, that the plow 
sometimes runs quite down to it. When this 
is lime rock, the land is very productive and 
does not suffer so much as I should expect by 
drouth. It produces sweet grass and is more 
valuable for dairy purposes than any other. 
A railroad, now building through this county, 
will soon open its hidden treasures to the view 
of the world. Indeed, I intend to see more of 
it myself. 
Creating a Spring. — When fitting up his dairy, 
Mr. Eames was much at a loss about a supply 
of water, having no spring that would give him 
a constant running stream. But he got one, 
and the way he did it is worthy of notice and 
imitation. He examined the sidehill, about one 
hundred rods above the house, and selected a 
favorable spot, where the land had a " spouty" 
appearance, and dug a reservoir and wing 
ditches to form underdrains into it, and soon 
had the satisfaction to find the plan succeed 
which gave him a living fountain that runs sum- 
mer and winter in the cowyard without fail 
from the drouth or frost. This is only one of 
the fruits of an intelligent mind devoted to ag- 
ricultural improvement, and possessed by a self- 
made man. But he is a reading man as well as 
a working one. Solon Robinson. 
REMARKS ON BREEDING. 
As an illustration of the effects of in-and-in 
breeding, the following instance is related to us 
as having occurred in a particular neighborhood 
in this county. A farmer of a sour, unsocial 
disposition, who as much as possible avoided 
all intercourse with the rest of the world, and 
shunned asking the slightest favor of a neigh- 
bor, lest he might at some time be desired to re- 
ciprocate the kindness shown him, for a long 
series of years, bred his cattle entirely from his 
own stock. In consequence of this course, such 
a herd of mis-shapen, ungainly, big-headed 
quadrupeds Avere produced that they could 
scarcely be rocognised as belonging to the cat- 
tle kind ; and " 's wolverines" were for a 
long time the butt of ridicule in the whole vi- 
cinity. 
The careful breeder, upon either system, will 
avoid using, even for a single season, any ani- 
mal possessing obvious defects ; for such defects, 
once introduced in but the slightest degree, are 
liable to be transmitted and reappear even 
after several generations have passed. To the 
many curious and valuable facts already on 
record relating to this subject, the following 
may be added: — A portion of the fowls pos- 
sessed by Constant. Clapp, Esq., were formerly 
of the " downy" breed. But this variety, so 
strongly marked, had run out and entirely dis- 
appeared from his premises for eight years, 
when three of these downy individuals, perfect 
in every particular, reappeared among his 
flock — showing that the blood, though appa- 
rently obliterated, had yet been lurking there, 
generation after generation. [This is what is 
technically called in breeding, " crying back." 
—Eds.] 
It was a favorite theory with the late distin- 
guished General Schuyler, a man of extensive 
observation, of deep penetration, and sound 
judgment, that the true character, either of a 
man or beast, could be ascertained by looking 
at the parentage from which he had descended ; 
and as an illustration of this, he used humor- 
ously to relate the incident, that in the early 
years of the Dutch trade with the East Indies, 
one of his ancestors, being a sea captain, had 
gone thither, and returned with a wife — a Mon- 
golian lady, whom he had married in his ab- 
sence. And the blood of that cross continued 
still to cling to the descendants two centuries 
afterwards, despite of all their efforts to eradi- 
cate it — so that down to the present day, in one 
branch and another of the family, one of «these 
confounded East Indians would occasionally be 
making his appearance ! — Ti-ans. N. Y. Ag. Soc. 
