No. 7. DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE. 307 



free from all disease germs except those which may come from dis- 

 eased cows, aud that all other cases of coutaminatioii must come 

 from the outside, it becomes merely a problem of protecting the 

 milk from bacteria in its course from the cow to the human stomach. 



This, until the milk reaches the house, must be the particular duty 

 of the father in protecting the home. Is it necessary to repeat 

 that the stables must be kept clean and well-ventilated, and the 

 cows should be kept clean and well-brushed, so that the dust falling 

 into the milk and carrying with it g'erms, will be lessened? It 

 is a great help to keep the long hairs on the flanks and udders 

 clipped, and to wipe just before milking with a cloth (dampened). 

 Of course, the hands of the milker should be clean, and it is well 

 to discard the first milk from the ducts, a sit has been found to be 

 worthless, and contains germs which have entered from the out- 

 side. I might suggest, that as bacteria laden dust is heavier than 

 air, and will settle, the use of the protected top pail recommended 

 by the Cornell Experiment Station. They have found a wide dif- 

 ference in the number of bacteria in the two pails under the same 

 conditions — thirteen hundred in the one, and three hundred ani 

 twenty in the other with one-half as large an opening. Milk should 

 be at once removed from the stable, cooled below 50 degrees, and 

 kept in a sanitary room; the best protection is in quick cooling and 

 keeping cold, for we have seen that the germs require warmth for 

 their development. 



It is the housewife's cai/e that the milk vessels should be in 

 proper condition, and, it seems foolish I know to speak to house- 

 keepers of something so obvious as the need of clean milk vessels, 

 but an experience of mine not long ago opened my eyes to the fact 

 that there may be fewer milk vessels clean and properly sterilized 

 than we have suspected. 



I was calling on one whom we have supposed to be a good house- 

 keeper, and remarking the difficulty and time consumed in keeping 

 a certain make of separator clean, especially when left to the care 

 of a servant. I said mine would not keep it clean, and, in fact, 

 I believed that it could not be kept clean, without a greater amount' 

 of labor than some other kinds, so did not intend to keep it. She 

 replied that she had no trouble with the same make; that it took 

 but a few minutes to wash it. I could not see how she could be 

 so sure that there was no filth in the little depressions in so short 

 a time, and she brought in the articles to prove her statement. In 

 every little wrinkle one could scrape off enough to hold on the point 

 of a pin; not much, I admit, but enough nevertheless, to form a 

 home for hundreds of the microscopic germs. Are we careful to 

 see that our pails, pans, creamery cans or separators, each crack 

 and wrinkle, if you have not the smooth ones, are properly cleansed 

 in pure water with some antiseptic such as a 2 per cent, solution 

 of w^ashing soda, thoroughly scalded by steam of boiling water and 

 ])laced in the sunshine protected from the dust? Do we frequently 

 boil all our strainers and other cloths in a solution of washing soda? 



It would be superfluous to repeat the lessons that every child is 

 now taught, of the necessity of a supply of oxygen to burn up the 

 wastes of the body in the lungs, and of the necessity of getting rid, 

 in our homes, of the resulting carbon dioxide and other impurities 



