494 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



I pass, secondly, to consider the present inadequate supply of milk 

 to the peasantry and country people generally. It is not commonly 

 known that the English peasantry get, as a rule, and in many parts of 

 the country, less milk than the population of the towns. The swine 

 are really better off in many instances. 



Buttermilk should be used, and proves most wholesome and nutri- 

 tious. When the gentry in any neighborhood are supplied with milk, 

 little remains for the poorer folks to buy, and much of what they get 

 is either doled out, as a form of charity, from the dairies of the rich, 

 and is already skimmed, or too little for their real wants and require- 

 ments remains available for purchase. 



The results of this milk-starvation in the country are readily ob- 

 served ; the children suffer much from want of good milk, and, hardly 

 less, many of the adults. Milk and meat are rare commodities among 

 the peasantry who are not so situated as to secure supplies on the 

 estates of their masters. The loss of meat can be far better borne 

 than that of milk. A good supply of vegetables, wath cheese and 

 onions, will make up for loss of much animal food, especially if whole- 

 some brown, or whole meal, bread be eaten. The fact that the best 

 bread, as it is termed, is so largely used by the poor, has often been 

 shown to be due to the erroneous belief that the whitest bread is more 

 wholesome and "goes further" than that made from "seconds" flour. 

 A diet of this " best " bread and a scanty allowance of skimmed milk 

 is, in truth, a very poor and ill-nourishing one. The strange fact 

 remains that pampered servants, and the lower orders generally, pre- 

 fer this poor stuff because it is called the best, while their betters, 

 who eat darker-colored, or whole-meal bread, have no influence whatever 

 in setting them a better example. It must strike all trained observers 

 that there is a great deal of aneemia among the poorer country-folks, 

 even in the healthiest districts, and much of this I believe to be due to 

 errors in diet, and some of it to insufficient use of milk. 



It comes to this, therefore a large increase in our milk-supply is 

 absolutely called for. It seems certain that our farmers can no longer 

 grow cereals so as to make them a source of profit, or to meet the 

 wants of our population. America, Canada, and India can always 

 meet our deficiencies. Our corn-fields are rapidly being laid down in 

 permanent pasture, but the herds of grazing-cattle we were wont to 

 see are gradually dwindling away. Cattle-plague and various mur- 

 rains explain this lamentable fact. But are these henceforth to pre- 

 vail to such an extent as to curtail our home-grow^th of beef and our 

 milk production ? I, for one, sincerely trust not, and I hope I am not 

 too sanguine when I express the belief that the time is not far distant 

 when, by a large, a very large, increase in our grazing-stocks, we may 

 at least meet the crying want of a much better milk-supply for the 

 w^hole country. TJie Practitioner. 



