pure blood; but with a half-blood grade bull, the first offspring from common stock has only one-fourth pure blood, the next cross has only one-eighth, the third one-sixteenth pure blood, and so on--reducing the purity in the same ratio as the use of pure blood improves it--if we continue to breed from the grade male offspring. If we always use a half-blood male, there may be a slight improvement in the blood. But the improvement is too slow and the benefit too uncertain to make the use of a grade bull advisable when a pure blood can be had. BREEDING DAIRY STOCK. Having briefly glanced at the characteristics of the different breeds, it will not be out of place to say a few words about breeding and rearing dairy stock. There are three things to be considered: 1. Selection. 2. Coupling. 3. Care. SELECTION. By selection, we mean not only the selection of the breed adapted to the line of dairying pursued, but the selection of the individual animals to breed and rear animals from, and especially the bull to be used on the herd. This male should have a good pedigree--that is, be the lineal descendant of animals known to possess the qualities desired in the future herd. This is all-important; for however well-formed and comely he may be, he will transmit the qualities of his ancestors as surely as like begets like. This fact can never be safely ignored. Milk and butter qualities, in a dairy herd, must take precedence over beauty of form, however desirable the latter may be. The cows to rear stock from should be selected, as far as possible, on the same principle. Pedigree is not of as much consequence in a cow, so far as practical results are concerned, though it helps insure certainly in the quality of the offspring when that of the cow, as well as of the bull, is right. But we may safely venture on raising the calves of a good milker, as the probabilities are that the offspring will inherit the qualities of the sire, while it may also inherit the qualities of the dam, though she be of the most mongrel or mixed blood. If there is failure, however, it need not go beyond that one animal--unless an attempt is made to use a grade bull on a nondescript dam, in which case prepotency is weakened and mongrelism may show in the offspring. But grade bulls should never be used when it is possible to have the use of the right kind of pure blood, which is always stronger than mixed blood, and hence a pure blood sire is pretty sure to transmit the qualities of his herd and family, in a great degree, even when coupled with a cow of uncertain blood. In breeding, the one bull makes half the herd, and when used on common stock, the offspring will always be half-bloods the first generation. The second generation they become three-quarter bloods; the third seven eighths; the fourth fifteen-sixteenth, and so on, constantly approaching, but never reaching, purity. For all dairy purposes, however, they become practically as good as pure-bloods.