150 
THE CULTIVATOR.. 
April, 
Review. 
“ THE DAIRYMAN’S MANUAL: being a Complete Guide for 
for the American Dairyman. With numerous illustrations. By 
Gtjrdon Evans, M. A.” 
Book-making is working wonderful progress in these 
United States. Genuine authorship is quite another mat¬ 
ter. With the first, our printing presses teem with a fe¬ 
cundity possible only to the facility with which paper, 
types, and printing ink, are supplied. Its quality in the 
way of merit, appears to be of little account, provided 
the book will sell. The current demand for agricultural 
books, seems as likely to be supplied from this branch of 
the trade, as that of any other kind of literature; and 
the work now presented is a genuine, unadulterated type 
of the book-making genus. 
A u Dairyman’s Manual,” as this book professes to be, 
% is much wanted in our country, of the right kind; and 
whether this is the one required, we shall proceed to ex¬ 
amine. To begin.; it is an old fashioned notion—perhaps 
it may be nothing more than a notion in the minds of 
some people—that an author, or even a creditable book¬ 
maker, should have some experimental knowledge of the 
subject on which he writes, or compiles, as almost every 
subject contains some chaff among the wheat which it of¬ 
fers; and the knowledge in question is necessary to sift 
the one from the other; and, when the office of selection 
is the only toil of getting up the work, the winnowed 
grain only, should be given to the public. 
To say that this book of 235 pages, in octavo, is well 
printed, in clear, large type, and on good paper, which it 
is, is no more than should be said of any book worth 
printing at all, in the present perfection of the typograph¬ 
ical art. So far it is unobjectionable. In other things it 
has merit. It is well divided into chapters on the seve¬ 
ral parts of the subjects discussed; and which, if well se¬ 
lected, might become a quite passable authority with 
those who require to consult its pages. That the com¬ 
piler does, either theoreticall 3 T , or practically, under¬ 
stand the sulijects of which he has treated, and arranged, 
I must be allowed to entertain some doubts. Still I am 
disposed to deal with him candidly and kindly, commend¬ 
ing his judgment where it has been well exercised, yet 
condemning it frankly where lie has played the quack. 
Fidelity to the truth of agricultural progress, and to 
the public, will not permit me, for the sake of kind 
words, towards the book-making fraternity, to aid in 
palming off either their mistakes or their crudities, upon 
the confidence of our farmers. 
The first chapter of the work under consideration, al¬ 
ludes to the history of the dairy, going back to the Book 
of Job for authority, and in three pages bringing the sub¬ 
ject down to the current time. Chapter II. treats of the 
importance of the dairy, by giving some statistics of the 
value of cows, and their dairy productions in the state 
of New-York, together with the produce of several in¬ 
dividual cows, from recorded statements already publish¬ 
ed, principally from the volumes of Transactions of our 
State Agricultural Society. Chapter III. contains a 
brief notice of some different breeds of cattle, acknow¬ 
ledged to be from the “ Encyclopedia of Geography,” 
accompanied by two portraits—a Jersey bull and cow— 
taken from cuts of the aforesaid “ Transactions,” and fol¬ 
lowed by some common-place remarks, for the fortieth 
time reiterated, and as many times discarded, of the po¬ 
licy of rearing up an American breed of dairy cows from 
the common heterogeneous blood of our native stock, as 
being superior to any improved foreign blood for dairy 
purposes. 
Chapter IY. on the “ different breeds of Cows,” with 
the cut of a Short-horn bull, opens decidedly rich. For 
the instruction of my readers, an extract is offered: 
•• The Short-horn, or Durham. This a high bred Eng- 
lish variety, some branches of which date back an unin¬ 
terrupted pedigree for many generations. The improved 
Short-horns originated with Mr. Charles Colling, a dis¬ 
tinguished cattle breeder of England. He owned a bull 
named Hubback, of the Teeswater breed, smaller than 
that breed in general, but remarkably disposed to take on 
fat. From this bull, and a Galloway cow, he commenc¬ 
ed that famous stock, the Improved Short- horns!” 
This will answer, I think, to start with; and although 
one would infer from a sort of general allusion to his 
authority for this paragraph, that the author was so 
instructed from an article ,in the “ Transactions” of 
1841, (rais-printed in this book as 1849,) by Col. H. 
S. Randall; he should have had discrimination enough 
to discover that Col. Randall neither said nor inferred 
any shell thing, in the article in question. 
This reiterated slander upon the genealogy of the 
Short-horns, by a class of men who profess to instruct 
the public, but who are either too ignorant, or too lazy 
to investigate the truth, has been so long chronicled 
through the pages of our agricultural books and publica¬ 
tions, that I here desire to place my finger upon it, in a 
standing record in your pages, and to settle the question 
as it should be. The long and short of this Colling, and 
Hubback, and Galloway matter, is this. The Short-horn 
breed of cattle can be traced, in the north-eastern coun¬ 
ties of England, back, not only through many “genera¬ 
tions,” but for many centuries. The bull “ Hubback,” 
about which so many erroneous assertions have been made, 
touching his lineage, and the short time he was used as a 
stock-getter, was, according to the best investigation, a 
thorough-bred Short-horn, and got calves years before he 
became the property of Mr. Colling, and for several 
years after Mr. Colling sold him; and Mr. Colling never 
ascertained his great value until after he had parted with 
him, and the bull became the property of Mr, Hubback, 
from whom the bull afterwards took his name. This bull 
was calved in the year 1777. The Galloway cow, in 
question, which was the great grand dam, by other Short¬ 
horns bulls than Hubback, of the cow Lady, bred by 
Charles Colling, only one-eighth in Galloway blood, and 
seven-eighths Short-horn, was calved irt 1788, and Lady, 
her great grand daughter, was calved in 1796. From this 
cow Lady, and his own unadulturated Short-horn bulls, 
Mr. Colling bred several animals, which he sold at high 
prices at his great cattle sale in 1810; and from men, 
among whom was Berry, an often quoted authority, who 
purchased this bastard blood, the descendants of the cow 
Lady—although the animals possessed it in a very remote 
degree—the story has arisen of their superior value, 
principally to raise the selling reputation of their own 
stock. Hubback had nothing to do with this recorded 
“ Galloway cow.” He died before she was born; and as 
to originating the “ improved” Short-horns, Charles Col¬ 
ling had no more to do with it than the man in the moon. 
He has repeatedly confessed that he purchased as good 
cows of other cattle breeders, as any that he ever bred 
himself; and the chief merit of Colling Is. that although 
a good breeder, he was, by the energy of his character, 
and his perseverance, the leading man of his day in mak¬ 
ing the Short-horns famous, a@d introducing them 
throughout many distant counties in England, where they 
had not hitherto been bred. 
We fancy that the American breeders of Short-horns 
will not give to our author an assembled vote of thanks 
for his information on this head, which, if true, would at a 
comparatively recent date, make these favorite and high¬ 
ly valuable race of cattle, a compound of bastardy little 
likely to perpetuate the “ long line” of ancient and legi¬ 
timate blood and quality so universally attributed to them. 
Three pages of extracts, not over-well selected, with a 
touch or two of their dairy qualities, do up his notice of 
the most valuable race of cattle in existence. 
Next follows a notice of the “ Devonshire .” Webave 
always supposed these to be Devons, simply, without the 
shire. The author puts them down as no milkers, and 
consequently, in their high blood, unfit for the dairy. 
Had he known more about Devon cows, he would have 
written differently. When he can produce a cow, weigh¬ 
ing, in ordinary condition, not over nine or ten hundred 
pounds, which will produce more milk, or butter, or 
cheese, or of better quality than numerous thorough¬ 
bred Devons that can be produced in this and adjoining 
