Excerpt from A Hundred Years Progress of American Agriculture: An Essay From the Twenty-First Annual Report of the Massachusetts State Board of Agriculture These were the sources from which our common or native cattle sprang. The earlier importations were undoubtedly more extensive than any subsequent ones, the colonists rely ing upon the natural increase to supply their wants, but there is historical evidence to show that there was more or less interchange of stock between the various colonies at an early date, and that this resulted in a mixture of blood, such as we find it now in our common stock. We are to bear in mind, also, that the stock of the mother country and of various other countries from which the supplies of the colonists were drawn was not at that time improved as we find it in the present day. It was long before the interest in the improvement of stock had been awakened, and it is a historical fact that the ox of that day was small and ill-shaped, quite inferior to the ox of our own time that the sheep has undergone a vast improvement, both in the fineness and value of its wool and the size and quality of the carcase, within the last century; that throughout the earlier part of the last century the average gross weight of the neat cattle sent to Smithfield market did not exceed three hundred and seventy pounds, and that of sheep twenty-eight pounds, while the average weight of the former is now over eight hundred pounds, and of the latter over eighty pounds. Nor is it probable, on account of the high price of cattle at that period, and the risks to which they were exposed, that the colonists obtained the best specimens then known. In fact the difference in animals, and what are now considered the best points and the highest indications of improvement, were nowhere understood or appreciated two centuries ago. That the cattle of the early settlers were poor of their kind, as compared with our ideas of the quality of similar animals, is, therefore, plain enough to be understood. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.