126 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. 



native animals have been so intermingled with bad strains and 

 conflicting strains of blood, that the result is always uncertain. 

 A good native cow is a chance production, and the attempt to breed 

 from that class of stock with any certainty, has always proved a 

 failure. We have an old English adage which comes in here: 

 ■' A good cow may have a bad calf." That is directly in contra- 

 diction to the adage that controls us in breeding, that " Like 

 begets like." 



Before speaking upon the different breeds of cattle particularly, 

 I would allude to the different kinds of milk desirable for different 

 purposes. There are fou/ objects for which we make milk — for 

 cheese, for butter, for market, and for famity use ; and all to a 

 certain extent admit, and even demand, a different kind of animal, 

 producing either a different quality of milk, or in some wa^y. pro- 

 ducing it in a different manner; perhaps merely protracting the 

 season of yielding milk. For market, we demand an abundant 

 quantity of milk ; we want good milk, but it is not desirable that 

 the cream should separate readily, but otherwise ;; that the cream 

 may remain suspended in the milk is the most desirable quality in 

 market milk. To attain this object, we take pains in curing it for 

 market. The milk is cooled and stirred immediately when it 

 comes from the cow, for the express purpose of disseminating 

 and retaining the cream through the whole substance of the milk ; 

 that is one of the objects of curing. Now, if we can find a kind 

 of milk that answers that purpose more particularly, that docs not 

 as naturally separate into cream and skim milk, that kind is better 

 for market purposes than such as separates more readily. It is 

 also better for cheese. One of the great difficulties in the manu- 

 facture of cheese consists in the trouble experienced in dissemi- 

 nating the cream through the body of the milk. It has always 

 been a contested point among cheese makers, whether, when 

 cream was once separated, they could get it back again into the 

 substance of the milk, and so into the cheese. They disagree 

 about that continually and everywhere. It is not a settled ques- 

 tion ; some claim that they can. I think it is rather by a happy 

 entanglement of the particles of the cream with the curd, than by 

 the perfect dissemination of it through the milk that this is secured ; 

 and that if it has once been separated it never can be again so per- 

 fectly united in the curd ; but by a happy process of manufacture, 

 it may be entangled to a certain extent and retained. But you 

 want milk that will not readily throw up its cream ; that will hold 



