The Vermont watchman. [volume] (Montpelier, Vt.) 1883-1911, 1890-09-03
Editorial NOtings.

did the same thing, but by personal re-
quest we got a bound copy. Paper
covered books are of no use in an ed
itor's library, and those that reach us
go into the waste basket without
further notice. But we make an excep-
ton in favor of our station, so far as
this. 60
TIE three New England States issu-
ing the best agricultural reports are
Maine, Massachusetts and Connecticut.
There is an amount of sound and faith
full work put into these books which
gives them not only special, but
permanent and cumulative value. A
uniform binding adds materially to the
pleasure with which they are received,
and adds also no little to the desire
man who loves books will naturally
have to preserve them. We have been
in the habit of giving rather full
notice of each, as annually received,
but rarely without some protest from
farmers in Vermont who find them in
accessible. Press notices of books are
generally supposed and desired to in
crease their circulation, and when
valuable they will have that effect on
books which are for sale. We offer the
suggestion that all the New England
agricultural reports have price affixed
for would-be purchasers outside the
states which issue them. A good al
tentative might be the giving in each of
a summary of the most valuable in
formation in the others for the pre-
ceding year. The reports referred to
(for copies of which our hearty &C
acknowledgement is made to Secretaries
Gold, Gilbert and Sessions) have
bound up with them in all three cases
the reports of the experiment stations
to which Maine adds the report of its
State Pathological Society. These are
fairly well indexed, thought that is
point where improvement is possible
with all. The art of indexing, and the
great value of a good index to works of
reference, such as these, is not too
well understood, yet, by those who
make them.
IT is true, as Brother Cheever says,
in the Ne,C England Farmer, that there
is no such thing as "pure blooded
Morgan horse-and yet there is in no
other breed more fixed and recog-
nizable type than the Morgan, as he is
seen on the road, and in the streets of
every Vermont village. The brief
craze, some twenty years ago, for more
" rangy" horses-horses that "could
go farther in day than they could get
back in three Though it threatened
the perpetuity of the Morgans, did not
last long enough to injure the type Sc
riously, except in those bred for gam
bling purposes-and even with these
the value of Lambert stock shows the
strength of the popular appreciation of
the Morgans. 1t is hardly necessary to
go into any deep physiological specula-
lions regarding the true inwardness of
the Morgan. He is partly the product
of his environment in a billy country
with poor roads; but he is more the re-
suit of purely practical course of Sc
lection on the part of body of intelli-
gent farmers and villagers, who know
a good thing when they see it, and
know enough to perpetuate it.
WHEN we come to look at the facts,
is it not this sort of selection, rather
than any artificial or predetermined
plan, based upon theory, which has
given existence to nearly every valued
breed of our domestic animals? Have
not men almost unconsciously, by
simply selecting that which was fittest,
and giving it good care because it was
so fit, determined the chief characters
tics of all our live stock? True, some
leading spirits of decided and positive
character, aided by favorable circum-
stances and long life, have been able,
in many cases, to make such wise Sc
lections, and breed with such good
judgment, as to both improve and fix
the type which the general mind has
determined to be best. But without
the previous unconscious work of many,
guided to selection by self-interest, the
material needed for these men to work
upon would have had no existence.
THE Newport (Vt) ETpreSS, which has
been criticising the attempt to repeople
our abandoned farms in a captious
spirit for some time (and the propre-
tor of which has directly charged Com
missioner Valentine with overdrawing
the condition of things in Newport, be-
You'd the report made to him by Mr..
Holbrook), never lets a chance 90 by