In order to obtain these valuable properties the good farmer will make himself perfectly master of the characters and qualities of his own stock. He will trace the connection of certain good qualities and certain bad ones, with an almost invariable peculiarity of shape and structure; and at length he will arrive at a clear conception, not so much of beauty of form (although that is a pleasing object to contemplate) as of that outline and proportion of parts with which _utility_ is oftenest combined. Then carefully viewing his stock he will consider where they approach to, and how far they wander from, this utility of form; and he will be anxious to preserve or to increase the one and to supply the deficiency of the other. He will endeavor to select from his own stock those animals that excel in the most valuable points, and particularly those which possess the greatest number of these points, and he will unhesitatingly condemn every beast that manifests deficiency in any one important point. He will not, however, too long confine himself to his own stock, unless it be a very numerous one. The breeding from close affinities has many advantages to a certain extent. It was the source whence sprung the cattle and sheep of Bakewell and the superior cattle of Colling; and to it must also be traced the speedy degeneracy, the absolute disappearance of the New Leicester cattle, and, in the hands of many agriculturists, the impairment of constitution and decreased value of the New Leicester sheep and of the Short-horns. He will therefore seek some change in his stock every second or third year, and that change is most conveniently effected by introducing a new bull. This bull should be of the same breed, and pure, coming from a similar pasturage and climate, but possessing no relationship--or, at most, a very distant one--to the stock to which he is introduced. He should bring with him every good point which the breeder has labored to produce in his stock, and if possible, some improvement, and especially in the points where the old stock may have been somewhat deficient, and most certainly he should have no manifest defect of form; and that most essential of all qualifications, a hardy constitution, should not be wanting.