454 WISCONSIN STATE AGRICULTURAL SOCIETY, 
regions they multiplied into numerous herds, with little attention 
to their improvement, as they are now found and known; but of 
late years, since the annexation of Texas, New Mexico and Cali¬ 
fornia, they have become quite an article of commerce and con¬ 
sumption in other states. 
In nearly all the grass-producing or grazing portions of our older 
states, as the people progressed in their modes of agriculture, their 
cattle, increased and multiplied, were usually well cared for, and 
answered all the purposes demanded of them. In some sections of 
country they were better cared for than in others, and possibly im¬ 
proved in quality over the originals from which they sprung; yet 
as the settlers, after some years, began to migrate to different local¬ 
ities, taking portions of their herds with them, the cattle became 
intermixed with those derived from other nationalities, so that in 
process of time a general intermixture took place, and the name 
“common cattle ” was only known in its application. This name 
is now continued to distinguish them from the improved breeds of 
later years. 
Occasionally, and at different times in the last century, tradition 
has informed us that enterprising men of wealth had imported some 
choice cattle of “ improved ” blood from Europe — the names of 
the breeds not remembered—but they were so few, and so little 
attention was paid to their propagation in their own distinct lines, 
that they soon became amalgamated with the common stocks. Yet, 
that the infusion of their blood among the others to some extent 
made their progeny better than the older herds, we have good rea¬ 
son to believe, particularly as the working oxen of the eastern 
states, and their superior dairy cows, for some generations past, 
have been held in high estimation. This assertion may, however, 
be qualified by saying that the oxen were chiefly used in labor on 
the farms, and the dairy formed a considerable staple of their agri¬ 
culture; consequently drawing closer attention to the cultivation 
of their cattle. In the more fertile soils of the middle states, which 
were chiefly grain growing, horses were used for labor, and cows 
in the dairy mainly for domestic consumption, Avhile the steers and 
bullocks grown by them were for meat purposes, or, if for labor at 
all, only for a few years, until the forests were subdued and the 
land made clear for horse cultivation. 
