uart--amounting to eighteen dollars. Is not the second cow, while she
holds out to give it, as good as the first, and three hundred dollars
at interest besides? If the first just pays for her food and
attendance, the second, yielding two-fifths more, pays _forty per
cent. profit_ annually; and yet how many farmers having two such cows
for sale would make more than ten, or twenty, or at most, thirty
dollars difference in the price? The profit from one is eighteen
dollars a year--in ten years one hundred and eighty dollars, besides
the annual accumulations of interest--the profit of the other
is--nothing. If the seller has need to keep one, would he not be wiser
to give away the first, than to part with the second for a hundred
dollars?

Suppose again, that an acre of grass or a ton of hay costs five
dollars, and that for its consumption by a given set of animals, the
farmer gets a return of five dollars worth of labor, or meat, or wool,
or milk. He is selling his crop at cost, and makes no profit. Suppose
by employing other animals, better horses, better cows, oxen and
sheep, he can get ten dollars per ton in returns. How much are the
latter worth more than the former? Have they not doubled the value of
the crops, and increased the profit of farming from nothing to a
hundred per cent? Except that the manure is not doubled, and the
animals would some day need to be replaced, could he not as well
afford to give the price of his farm for one set as to accept the
other as a gift?

Among many, who are in fact ignorant of what goes to constitute merit
in a breeding animal, there is an inclination to treat as imaginary
and unreal the higher values placed upon well-bred animals over those
of mixed origin, unless they are larger and handsomer in proportion to
the price demanded. The sums paid for qualities which are not at once
apparent to the eye are stigmatized as _fancy prices_. It is not
denied that fancy prices are sometimes, perhaps often paid, for there
are probably few who are not willing occasionally to pay dearly for
what merely pleases them, aside from any other merit commensurate to
the price.

But, on the other hand, it is fully as true that great intrinsic
value for breeding purposes may exist in an animal and yet make very
little show. Such an one may not even look so well to a casual
observer, as a grade, or cross-bred animal, which although valuable as
an individual, is not, for breeding purposes, worth a ten