AMERICAN AGRICULTURIST. 
201 
does them no credit, only to show they can 
do such things as well as other people. 
Others, again, select a country seat an 
hour’s ride from their business in the city, 
and thus sacrifice an hour each morning and 
evening, and the lost time in waiting for the 
cars, all the time they could otherwise allot 
to their children and families ; consequently 
their little ones, who have the first claim on 
every parent, are rudely pushed aside and 
neglected at the beck of a mere notion fora 
fashionable country seat. His family is 
isolated from good schools, churches, and 
society, simply because the man is not man 
enough to ask himself the question, what he 
wants ? A fifteen minutes’ car or omnibus 
ride, at any desired moment, would take him 
from his business to a home near Union- 
square ; but no—the dearest interests of life— 
of his family—must he sacrifice to a mere 
whim, simply because the man does not know 
what he wants. 
Again, in the country many a man buys 
two hundred acres of land when he needs 
but one hundred—others buy one hundred 
when they need but ten—and others buy 
ten, when they need but one—and others 
would do better still on a simple city lot. 
Few men want the same kind of a residence. 
Comfort and convenience is what is wanted, 
and let every man look around himself, on 
his family, his circumstances, and condition, 
and then honestly ask himself—net his 
neighbor—not the beckonings of tyrannical 
fashion, nor the public even—what he really 
wants and then get it, and be satified with it. 
A PATTON COW. 
AN ENORMOUS MILKER. 
There was exhibited at the National Cat¬ 
tle Show, in October last, in Springfield, 0., 
by John W. Brock, of Highland County, in 
that State, a cow, mainly of the Patton stock, 
so called, with a dash of Short Horn blood 
in her veins, seven years old, of which certif¬ 
icates were shown by her owner, that she had 
given, for days together, on grass pastm^ 
eighty-eight pounds of milk per day, and 
that twenty-six pounds of her milk made a 
pound of butter! This yield, calling the 
milk nine pounds to the gallon, which is 
about the average weight, would be equal to 
39| quarts a day, making 23§ pounds of but¬ 
ter a week. 
This same cow had also given, on the same 
authority, for a few consecutive days, four 
pounds of milk every hour, it being regularly 
milked from her four times a day. This 
made the yield still greater.—equal to 96 
pounds, of 42§ quarts a day. 
Now, we think this will do, and that our 
Ohio friends who do not fancy Short Horns, 
or any other improved breed of cattle—to 
demonstrate that the old-fashioned Pattons, 
which the modern cattle breeders of Ken¬ 
tucky and Ohio have long since discarded— 
had better, like some of their like-minded 
Massachusetts brethren, go to work, and in¬ 
sist upon it that there is no breed of cows 
half so good for milking as the Patton ! And 
they have the best reasons in the world for 
it; for, unlike the Oakes cow, which was of 
no breed whatever, but, like little Topsey, 
only “ growed,’' so far as the world knew 
about it, this cow of Mr. Brock’s actually is 
known to be, as every look of her shows, 
mainly a Patton cow—that is to say, her dam 
was a Patton, and her sire a Patton grade 
Short Horn. 
It is true that, although this famous beast 
has had several calves, and some of them 
heifers, none of them have turned out to be 
any thing beyond ordinary milkers. But 
what of that ? She is mainly a Patton, and 
of course neither the Short Horns, the Dev¬ 
ons, the Alderneys,nor any thing else, can be 
so good, as a breed, because this one single 
Patton has beat every thing that those breeds 
ever produced here ! Now, fire up anew, our 
good old native State of Massachusetts, and 
“go it strong” once more upon the suprem¬ 
acy of the immortal Oakes cow. 
We are not joking. Mr. Brock, the owner 
of this wonderful Patton, is a man of respec¬ 
tability, as his manner and conversation 
showed, at Springfield. His neighbors of 
Highland County say so, and his statements 
can he proved —quite as conclusively as that 
of Mr. Oakes himself, or of Mr. E. Hersey 
Derby, of Salem, respecting the everlasting 
Oakes cow of Danvers, albeit the said state¬ 
ment was printed in the Essex County 
Transactions. 
We are not going to let this story of the 
Patton cow rest here, on this naked state¬ 
ment of what she has done, or what she can 
do ; nor to simply say that she was, like the 
Oakes cow, “ bought out of a drovebut, 
that the public may have the whole matter 
before them, we shall relate what kind of a 
looking cow she is, or was when we saw 
her. She was then dry, and in fair dairy 
condition only, and supposed by her owner 
to be within two months of calving. Her 
color is a pale red, with a white line on her 
back ; a white belly, and a few white hairs 
intermixed over her body. She is remark¬ 
ably large, and long, in all her proportions— 
head, neck, body, and limbs—just such a cow 
in appearance as would eat a great deal of 
food, and turn it all into milk ; and, like the 
Oakes cow, drink her skim milk back again, 
if she could get it—which, by the way, she 
did not. 
Her owner stated that, a year ago, when 
she had run dry for some months, she weighed 
2,000 pounds on the scales. This, to be 
sure, we thought a pretty big story, but we 
were bound to believe it, as well as the milk 
and butter part of it; as the cow had frame 
enough to do it. Therefore, this cow had 
size enough, she ate enough, was heavy 
enough, to be two good-sized cows made up 
into one ! and this considered, her feats at 
the pail and the churn are not so incred¬ 
ible. She was an enormously great, coarse, 
plain-looking cow, that consumed food in 
proportion to her size and the milk she 
gave. 
We have told the story, and thus stands 
the record. L. F. A. 
Signing Notes by Machinery. —Bank of 
England notes are now signed by machine¬ 
ry, by which a saving of £10,000 a year is 
effected. The machinery is of the most in 
genious description, and is held for the ex¬ 
clusive use of that institution. 
A Great Farm. —It is an error among 
many good people to suppose large fortunes 
the fruits only of mercantile or commercial 
life. Because a few wealthy names appear 
among them, we should not by any means 
take these as an index of the whole. We 
wish some of those eager young men who 
fly to the city in pursuit of riches, would 
read the following, and see whether there 
are not equal inducements to stay at home : 
The Richmond Dispatch speaks of a visit 
to a somewhat celebrated farm, on James 
River, Curl’s Neck. The proprietor har¬ 
vested about 40,000 bushels of wheat, and 
will have for sale 1,500 barrels of corn. 
For the American Agriculturist. 
CAYUGA LAKE AND ITS ENVIRONS. 
We all know the fertility of river bottoms ; 
but where they are the most productive, there 
those mephitic vapors most abound which 
entail both physical weakness and disease 
upon him who tills the soil. The calcareous 
clays along the borders of Cayuga and Sene¬ 
ca Lakes are, perhaps, the first in. order of 
fertility next to the most fertile prairies and 
river bottoms ; with the all-important ad¬ 
vantage of that healthy, invigorating climate, 
which gives to the farmer the necessary im¬ 
pulsiveness and love of labor, unknown to 
him who breathes the debilitating atmo¬ 
sphere of the river bottoms of the west. 
At Cayuga Bridge, on the east side of the 
Lake, is the first plaster quarry, no longer 
worked, as the gypsum is full of veins of 
hard black shale, while at the quarries four 
miles south, pure blue plaster, with veins of 
soft selenite abounds. The soil on the east 
side of the Lake, to the confines of Cayuga 
County, is a calcareous loam, with lime¬ 
stone pebbles and occasional quartz bould¬ 
ers ; farther south Tully limestone, bould¬ 
ers and shale are sparsely distributed. Oak 
and hickory, with its associate sylviac, once 
covered the region along the Lake shore ; 
farther interior, the tall elm, maple, beech, 
bass, &c., predominated originally in a 1 all 
unusually compact forest. On the western 
side of the Lade the elevation of the land, at 
the dividing ridge between the Cayuga and 
Seneca, does not exceed three hundred feet 
at Ovid, which increases to the south, while 
it is depressed at the north. The soil on 
both sides of the Lake is nearly identical; 
on the west side, however, the heavy tim¬ 
bered bass and maple lands take the place 
of the oaken forest at one point a little north 
of Shell Drake. From this point south-west, 
in the region of Farmerville, is the garden of 
Seneca County, where all the canals attain 
their maximum—not that the soil is richer 
in its natural constituents than in the other 
towns of the county, but being more rolling 
and less tenacious, it dispenses with that 
mechanical aid so necessary to relieve a 
more level surface of surplus water. 
The Lake is from two to four miles wide, 
and forty miles long ; its crooked course be¬ 
tween jutting points and promontones, gives 
fine landscapes and lake views for miles in 
