MILCH COWS. 215 



dairy and good dairy stock. On tins point, perhaps nothing 

 need be said. But there is one subject connected with keeping 

 dairy stock, that has not been sufficiently considered by many 

 of our farmers ; indeed, some of them seem to have given it no 

 thought whatever. Since convenient communication with the 

 city has been opened by railroad, many have turned their atten- 

 tion to the production of milk; in fact, some make it the chief 

 business of the farm. Now, to all such it is an important 

 question, whether, by this process, they are not gradually but 

 surely impoverishing their farms. Can three hundred, five 

 hundred, or a thousand dollars worth of milk be annually 

 carried off from the farm without diminishing the capability of 

 the soil for future production ? Certainly not, unless some 

 proportionate quantity of fertilizing material is brought back 

 to it over and above the manure made from milk-giving cows. 

 For it is a well-established fact that the droppings from milch 

 cows are much less strong and active than from other stock, 

 and particularly from animals under the process of fattening. 

 In our eagerness to obtain ample, immediate returns for our 

 labor, we must not forget that the true object of the farmer 

 should be, not to get the largest amount from the farm at the 

 present time, merely, but to pursue such a system of cultivation 

 that the soil shall, after each successive crop, be left in better 

 condition than before. Under the old method of making butter 

 from the milk, and feeding the skimmed milk to swine, there was 

 far less danger of a gradual deterioration of the soil than by the 

 system now under consideration ; for during the growth and 

 fattening of the swine, a large, if not an adequate amount of 

 manure, would be made ready for application to the land. In 

 Great Britain and on the Continent of Europe, there are large 

 tracts of land that have been under constant cultivation for 

 hundreds of years, and yet, at this very time, the capacity of 

 the soil for production is greater than at any former period. 

 This is brought about by feeding largely of the products of the 

 farm, in hay, roots and grain, to cattle, sheep and swine fattened 

 for the market, thus making their manure more valuable ; and 

 also by no inconsiderable annual outlay for the purchase of 

 various fertilizers brought from abroad. Mr. Holbrook, of 

 Brattleboro', one of the best cultivators of the soil in Vermont, 

 thinks that the farmer cannot afford to sell any considerable 



