y demonstrated, that good farm stock is better, and more
profitable than poor stock. Still, a taste for good stock, and the
advantages of keeping them, over the common stock of the country, is not
_generally_ understood; and that taste has to be cultivated. It is not
altogether a thing of nature, any more than other faculties which
require the aid of education to develope. We have known many people who
had a fine perception in many things: an eye for a fine house, pleasant
grounds, beautiful trees, and all the surroundings which such a place
might command; and when these were complete, would place about it the
veriest brutes, in the way of domestic animals, imaginable. The resident
of the city, who lives at his country-house in summer, and selects a
picture of mean or inferior quality, to hang up in his house by way of
ornament, would be laughed at by his friends; yet he may drive into his
grounds the meanest possible creature, in the shape of a cow, a pig,
or a sheep, and it is all very well--for neither he nor they know any
better; yet, the one is quite as much out of place as the other. The
man, too, who, in good circumstances, will keep and drive a miserable
horse, is the ridicule of his neighbors, because everybody knows what a
good horse is, and that he should be well kept. Yet, the other stock on
his farm may be the meanest trash in existence, and it creates no
remark. On the contrary, one who at any _extra_ cost has supplied
himself with stock of the choicer kinds, let their superiority be ever
so apparent, has often been the subject of ribaldry, by his unthinking
associates. And such, we are sorry to say, is still the case in too many
sections of our country. But, on the whole, both our public spirit, and
our intelligence, is increasing, in such things.

Now, we hold it to be a _practical_ fact, that no farm, or country
place, can be complete in its appointments, without good stock upon it;
and it is useless for any one to suppose that his farm, or his place, is
_finished_, without it. The man who has a fine lawn, of any extent,
about his house, or a park adjoining, should have something to graze
it--for he cannot afford to let it lie idle; nor is it worth while, even
if he can afford it, to be mowing the grass in it every fortnight during
the summer, to make it sightly. Besides this, grass will grow under the
trees, and that too thin, and short, for cutting. This ground must, of
course, be pastured. Now, will h