PERCENTAGE OF CREAM ON MILK. 33 



Dr. Stuktevant. I refer to the milk. 



Mr. Lewis. I have never measured it. I have often 

 weiofhed it. We can weigh milk better than we can measure 

 it, unless we wait until the froth subsides. 



Dr. Stuetevant. With reference to the effect of food upon 

 milk, I can state a fact which will show the uncertainty of it, 

 but which does not prove anything. Under the same feed, 

 and under the same circumstances, the same cow gave, one 

 day, nine and a half per cent, of cream, and another day, 

 eighteen per cent, of cream. 



Mr. Lewis. I can tell a bigger story than that. (Laugh- 

 ter.) Although a cheese maker, principally, I have made 

 butter enough to know what white-oak cheese is sometimes, 

 but I have taken a good deal of pains to test the value of my 

 milk that I have worked into cheese. I have per cent, glasses 

 for the purpose, and I have found a cow w4iose uniform per- 

 centage of cream w^as 18 per cent, reduced to six, in twelve 

 hours, — not from any change of food, but from a little ex- 

 citement. You gentlemen who make butter, be careful to 

 adopt my advice and always treat your cow gently and kindly ; 

 never get her excited, because every ounce of excitement will 

 take from her milk one per cent, of cream. I have known a 

 cow abused by a furious, brutal milker, and the percentage 

 of her cream went down one-half. It is astonishing what an 

 effect excitement has on the percentage of cream in the milk 

 that a cow produces. You will be astonished if you will make 

 the test, and make it carefully. I have known a cow, excited 

 from natural causes, to drop in her percentage of cream in her 

 milk from fourteen to six per cent, in twelve hours. So I 

 would again repeat, whoever abuses his cow knocks out of his 

 milk a large percentage of the cream. 



Dr. Stuetevant, of Framingham. Mr. Flint invited me to 

 make a few statements in regard to the yield of dairy cows, 

 and I have prepared some figures, w^hich I will read. 



With reference to the average- yield of milk in Massachu- 

 setts (because we wish to get a basis by which we can ascer- 

 tain the comparative yield of milk) , I find, on looking over 

 the "Agriculture of Massachusetts," a record of 76 different 

 experiments, carried on by 19 different people, in Worcester 

 County, during a series of years, by which it appears that it 



