Produced by David E. Brown and The Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images generously made available by The Internet Archive) [Illustration] LOUISIANA BEEF CATTLE WILLIAM CARTER STUBBS, PH.D. Formerly Professor of Agriculture Louisiana State University and Director of State Experiment Stations COPYRIGHT, 1917, BY THE LOUISIANA COMPANY NEW ORLEANS FOREWORD The following remarks relative to Louisiana Beef Cattle are proffered the public to show the marvelous advantages possessed by the alluvial lands of Louisiana, for the growing of cattle. An intelligent use of these advantages will bring wealth to the individual, the State and the Nation. WILLIAM CARTER STUBBS, PH.D. [Illustration] LOUISIANA BEEF CATTLE The wealth-producing possibilities of cattle-raising are written into the history, literature and art of every race; and with every nationality riches have always been counted in cattle and corn. We find cattle mentioned in the earliest known records of the Hebrews, Chaldeans and Hindus, and carved on the monuments of Egypt, thousands of years before the Christian era. Among the primitive peoples wealth was, and still is, measured by the size of the cattle herds, whether it be the reindeer of the frigid North, the camel of the Great Sahara, or herds of whatsoever kind that are found in every land and in every clime. The earliest known money, in Ancient Greece, was the image of the ox stamped on metal; and the Latin word _pecunia_ and our own English "pecuniary" are derived from _pecus_--cattle. Although known to the Eastern Hemisphere since the dawn of history, cattle are not native to the Western Hemisphere, but were introduced into America during the sixteenth century. Cortez, Ponce de Leon, De Soto and the other _conquistadores_ from Old Madrid, who sailed the seas in quest of gold, brought with them to the New World the monarchs of the bull ring, and introduced the national sport of Spain into the colonies founded in Peru, Mexico, Florida and Louisiana. The long-horned, half-wild herds encountered by the pioneers, and by the "Forty-niners," who three centuries later trekked across the continent in quest of gold in California, were descendants of the bull pens of Mexico City, St. Augustine and New Orleans. A different type of cattle was brought over to Jamestown, the first English colony, in the seventeenth century; these were strictly utilitarian, designed for the triple service of enriching the larder with dairy products, supplementing the abundant meat supply of buffalo, deer and other game and providing the ox as the draft animal. The pioneers, striking out from the Atlantic seaboard, carried with them their domestic cattle, which were introduced and fostered wherever settlements were made in their progress across the continent.