BREEDING OFF HORNS.

Waikato Times, Volume XXIII, Issue 1880, 24 July 1884, Page 4

BREEDING OFF HORNS.

A subscriber to the " Live Stock Journal" at Austin, Minn, writes: — " We have a dispute on the effect of destroying the horns of calves. The question is, could a hornless breed be produced in this manner, or a breed without horns, when not operated on artificially? Please be kind enough to let us know your opinion." Our domestic animals are almost plastic in our hands. Youatt mentions that, in polled Suffolk cattle, •' rudiments of horns can often be left at an early age ;'" aud Darwin says : " With hornless cattle aud sheei , another singular kind of rudiment has been observed, namely, minute, dangling horns, attached to the skin alone." Prof. Dawkins, author of " Early Man in Britaia," says : "It is easily to explain the ease with which in a comparatively short time, the horns have beeu bred out of some of our domestic cattle, by selection carried on through a few generations. What this will effect in modifying the cranial characters, may be gathered from the fact that the polled Galloway cattle have lost their horns and acquired a frontal protuberance within so short a time as eighty years." " Coventiy on Live Stosk," gives the opinion chat the Galloways begin to be without horns by crossing on them a hornless bull, and then, when in any case horns did appear, cutting them out with a knife, at a very early age. There can be no doubt that horns may be bred off any of our cattle, by first removing thp hoins when calves, and then only beeeding from the hornless. The writer of this has two half -Jerseys that are without horns, although both sire and dam had good-sized horns. One had its horns injured accidentally when a calf, and the other had its horns seared with a hot iron when they first started, and they afterwards ceased to grow. These two heifers sometimes have calves with horns, and sometimes without horns, the sire having horns. In breeding the horns off it would be necessary to have the site hornless. After a few of each &ex were established without horns by artitically removing them, aud then breeding these together, and continuing to breed those without horns, it, would require but a comparatively short time to establish a hornless breed. There would, at first, occasionally be a calf with horns, but this should be excluded. Breeders should be familiar with the fact that the animals they breed and feed are changeable in many ways by their action. They may take a very common cow that has, with her ancesters, been subjected to scanty feeding, and never had the milk secretions developed, if they take her young, and gradually increase her fo »d, which is addapted to milk production, they may easily add 50 per cent, t? her yield, and this increase will became characteristic, and will ba inherited by her progeny, and the next geneiatiou can be f Hither increased as milk pioducers ; or the breeder can almost breed milk production out of them— they are plastic in his hands.

A witness in a Kansas law-court, being bullied by a cross-examining lawyer, called upon the comt for protection. They handed him a pistol. ' I have no further questions to put,' said the lawyer. • There is nothing like settling down,' said a retired merchant confidentially to a neighbour. ' When I gave up business, I settle down, and found I had quite a fortune. If I had settled up, I should not have had a farthing.' A MAN took a seat in a barber's chair. He asked the barber if he had the same razor he had used two days before. Being answered in the affirmative, the patient man said, ' Then give me chloroform. ' ' I can marry any girl I please,' he said, with a self-satisfied expression of countenance. ' No doubt,' she responded sarcastically, ' but what girl do you please ?' They don't speak now. Little Jack — ' My mamma's new fan ia hand-painted.' Little Diek — ' Pooh, who cares ? Our back palings are.' At Ambrose's Barn, on the borders of Thorp, near Chertsey, resides a farmer, Mr Wapshot, whose ancestors have dwelt on the same spot ever since the time of Alfred the Great, by whom the farm was granted to Reginald Wapshot. A man went into a drug store and asked for something to cure a headache. The druggist held a bottle of hartshorn to his nose, and he was nearly overpowered by its pungency. As soon as he recovered he began to rail at the druggist and threatened to punch his head. ' But didn't it help your headache ? asked the apothecary. • Help my headache ! ' gasped the man. f I haven't any headache. It's my wife that's got the headache.' A Slight Mistake. — A few weeks ago (says the Timaru llciald) a gentleman entered the office of a well-known insurance agent, and, to sing a paper on the counter, said to Un o'etk : '* That is run out, and I want to get it renewed." The clerk unfolded the document, and, with a smile, inquiu'd : •' Are you sine that tins is Imi out?" "0 yes," said the gentleman, "my wife told me that it ran out yesterday " " Well, lam sorry for you ; but we are not taking that kind of risks now," lesponded the cleik, as he handed it back to him. It was his marriage cci tificate. Rats and Mice. — If you wish to de stroy them get a packet of Tin i.'s Magic Vkrmin K.illi'R in packets, 6d, 9d, and Is, to be obtained of all storekeepers, or from T. B. Hill by enclosing an extia stamp. Life in the Bush— Then and Now. — It is generally supposed that in the bush we have to put up with many discomforts and privations i n the shape of food. Formerly it was so, but now, thanks to T. B. Hnx, who has himself dwelt in the bush, if food does consist chiefly of tinned meats his Colonial S^vuck gives to them a most delectable flavour, making them as well of the plainest food most erjo} able, and instead as hard biscuits and indigestible dampei his larrßOvm Colonial Baking Powdlr makes the very best bread, scones, cakes, and pastry far superior and more wholesome than yeast or leaven. Sold by all storekeepers who can obtain it from any merchant in Auckland.