34 
AMERICAN AGRICULTURIST. 
of excellence which belong to the race. 
Tho very first requirement the breeder 
should insist upon in his animals, is perfect 
health and strong constitution. The crea¬ 
ture should not only be sound in its individ¬ 
ual self, but should be descended from robust 
and sound ancestors. No hereditary tenden¬ 
cies to disease should be tolerated. Diseases 
of almost any kind, even the slightest, are 
transmitted from parent to offspring with 
wonderful certainty and subtlety. They may 
remain dormant in the system for years, and 
break out when least suspected, even at a 
remove of three or four generations. The 
stock bull, in his blood and quality, is the 
most important instrument in good breeding, 
as his qualities are to affect, more or less, 
all the young blood of his get. His predomi 
nating merits should be, a neat head, having 
a fine muzzle, a quick, prominent, and mild 
eye, with a light waxy horn, and a thin, 
lively ear. A neck gracefully set, not over 
heavy, but strong and muscular, and some¬ 
what arching, with a clean throat, and little 
dewlap. This should be followed by upright 
open, and well spread shoulders. Behind 
these should spring out, at as near a right 
angle as possible to the back, a full, round, 
deep set of ribs, terminating forward with a 
prominent, well developed brisket, and be¬ 
hind with a full and deep flank. With such 
ribs, brisket and flank, goes constitution and 
stamina. Without them, goes weakness, 
and a disposition to degeneracy. After the 
ribs, let general levelness, breadth and depth 
of body, with fineness and symmetry, and, 
beyond all, a soft, elastic touch, be had, as 
far as possible. Minor defects may be par¬ 
tially overlooked for the great excellence of 
stamina, vigor, and sound health. 
Let him be not only good in himself but 
behind that, let his pedigree be good. A de¬ 
cidedly bad or deficient bull, no matter what 
his pedigree, is worthless, for the reason 
that it is a condition incident to all races of 
animals, be they ever so well bied, to some¬ 
times throw off a worthless or defective off¬ 
spring, as there is no knowing how far back 
in ancestry a bad cross may not show itself 
in the subsequent generation, or what strange 
influence may affect the dam at the moment 
of conception, or during the period of gesta¬ 
tion. An animal may have a pedigree of al¬ 
most interminable length, and every cross in 
it be a bad one. Of course, such will be an 
unsafe one to breed from. The length of 
pedigree, therefore, does not govern the 
quality of the animal. The quality and rep¬ 
utation of the animals through which he is 
descended, does more. When the pedigree 
runs back through good animals, and the 
creature himself justifies it, confidence may 
be placed in him. In making a selection, 1 
would, if possible, look through the several 
individuals of his family, and see how they 
appear—whether they possess good quali¬ 
ties, and whether such good qualities were 
uniform in the family ; for such uniformity 
is great excellence, as showing that the blood 
descends with certainty. It was, this uni¬ 
formity in the characteristics of his stock 
which gave Mr. Bates so much reputation 
So it was, and is now, with some breeders. 
When Mr. Bates had bred his Duchesses in 
and in, to the last degree he dared go, as he 
did, to preserve their uniform excellence, he 
was obliged to go into another herd for a 
new stock bull. This he procured in Bel¬ 
vedere, bred by Mr. Stephenson, whose herd 
was of ancient descent, and also uniform in 
their good qualities. In the use of this bull,' 
Mr. Bates continued the good qualities of his 
herd, and recovered those that he had par¬ 
tially lost, by two long adhering to his old 
blood ; but in a few years he resorted to still 
another cross, the “ Matchem Cow,” (on one 
side possessing the same blood as Belvedere 
had in him,) from which descended, through 
the blood of Belvedere and his Duchess cows, 
his Oxford family. The Matchem blood 
brought in stamina and vigor, with, perhaps, 
a trifle more coarseness than his old stock 
possessed, but he gained in the increased 
fecundity of his herd, and by the good judg¬ 
ment with which he bred them, he kept up 
the main characteristic of uniformity as be¬ 
fore. Probably few men in England could 
have so succeeded, for Mr. Bates knew pre¬ 
cisely what he wanted ; and after selecting 
the animal to use, he knew how to breed it. 
Some breeders wish to develop the milk¬ 
ing properties of their Short Horns, when 
they do not already possess it, or to perpet¬ 
uate it where they do. This .can only be 
done with success by breeding with bulls 
descended from milking families, and culti¬ 
vating the milking quality in the breeding 
cows, by keeping them constantly in milk 
for at least nine or ten months in the year, 
and giving them highly stimulating and milk- 
producing food, such as fresh grass, roots, 
and meal slops. Such as these will not be 
show cows, of course, for they will be low 
in flesh. A cow can not carry high flesh 
and yield great messes of milk at the same 
time. They may carry high flesh when off 
their milk, with certainty, as it is not neces¬ 
sary to lose the fattening quality for milking 
purposes. For milking, too, heifers must 
come in young, say from two to three years 
old, and be kept in milk for at least nine 
months with their first calf, that the milking 
faculties may be exercised, and kept in full 
play ; or, by soon drying them off, the milk¬ 
ing faculty may be measurably bred out, and 
the dam be devoted to the production of feed¬ 
ing animals altogether. 
It is a positive injury to a breeding animab 
either male or female , to get them into high 
flesh for show purposes. Many a valuable 
beast has been thus spoiled for future useful¬ 
ness. A very high state of flesh is not a 
natural state of the animal. The generative 
secretions become overloaded and contract¬ 
ed from the inordinate mass of fat inside, 
from which, in many cases, they never breed 
so good calves as before. This shows the 
great folly of awarding prizes to overfed 
breeding animals at our cattle-shows ; and 
until the managers of such societies as en¬ 
courage it reform their action, good breed¬ 
ers will not risk the spoiling of their best 
cattle to put them in competition. Yet, 
breeding animals should show good condi¬ 
tion—passable beef, if you please—but noth¬ 
ing more. 
The same rule, with allowances for differ¬ 
ences in sex, should be made in the selec¬ 
tion of cows, as in bulls, where the purse is 
allowed to go hand in hand with the taste ; 
yet, as the very choicest specimens are not 
abundant, and not often to be had at a price, 
the purchaser is apt to be limited in his se¬ 
lections to a second or third choice ; but in 
these, the substantial qualities that have 
been named should not be overlooked. 
CANADA THISTLE—(SNICUS ARVENSIS.) 
Some time since, a correspondent desired 
to know the peculiar appearance of the Can¬ 
ada Thistle, inasmuch as never having seen 
the plant, he could not be sure of recogniz¬ 
ing it when he should see it. That is a hap¬ 
py ignorance, and he may congratulate him¬ 
self if it shall forever so continue. There are 
persons and things in this world with whom 
acquaintance is not desirable, and the Cana¬ 
da Thistle may be safely reckoned as one 
of them. 
Nevertheless it may be of consequence to 
know how the thing would look were we to 
see it, especially if there is danger that at 
some time we may, against our will, be in¬ 
troduced to it. With such a notion we intro¬ 
duce to our readers this old pest of Vermont 
and the Genessee Valley of New-York. 
It is not a worse looking thistle than many 
others. Taken individually, it is not worse, 
and would it be content to grow by itself, 
now and then a plant here and there about 
the wayside, and up and down in neglected 
fields, it might be safe to despise and let it 
alone. But it is too ambitious a plant for 
that. It must grow everywhere. It must 
fill all the fields into which it can get a foot¬ 
hold. It must overrun the pasture ; it must 
fill the meadow ; it will overtop the oats; it 
will fight for equality with the corn ; it must 
be everywhere like David Jones’ yellow dog, 
and everywhere it must be disagreeable. It 
is as hateful as a Maclura hedge and no¬ 
where as beautiful, and not by a thousand 
times as safe; and as to use , it has none 
whatever. You can not touch it or be 
among it with either comfort or safety. 
Green or dry, dead or alive, it is the same un¬ 
comfortable enemy. 
The Canada thistle is propagated in two 
ways. First it spreads by stolons, that is, it 
puts out runners like a strawberry plant, 
with the difference that the thistle runners 
run underground ; and every now and then 
a root is put down ; and where the root goes 
down, a stalk springs up. This goes on in¬ 
definitely, and you can never be sure you 
have eradicated the plant till you have de¬ 
stroyed all those stolons or infant roots, for 
though you kill the old plant, the young ones 
may have got a foothold, and will grow in 
spite of it. Next, it propagates by seed. 
This is matured in bountiful quantities, and 
each seed is provided with a kind of balloon 
apparatus like any other thistle seed, or like 
that of the Dandeloin, by which it is buoyed 
up in the air and floats about wherever the 
wind carries it, till it gets tired floating or its 
parachutes get broken. A few plants there¬ 
fore will seed a neighborhood ; a neighbor¬ 
hood will seed a district, and a district will 
seed a State. 
It is a dreadful accommodating plant, tha 
