316 AGRICULTURAL REPORT. 
duration,) there are more losses from accident, sickness, aud death than 
during the other nine months of the year; and a large percentage of 
these losses is from want of care, want of proper food, and neglect of a 
judicious system of feeding. Such a system includes a liberal prevision 
of the best grasses, if possible, and, when these are not attainable, such 
grass as may be had, with grain and other nutritious substances added. 
Meadow grasses, and red and white clover, cut in blossom and weil 
cured, supplemented by roots, make excellent food. After coming in, 
cows should have not only good food, but also careful superintendence. 
They should be separated from those coming in, if it can be done with- 
out materially aitering the temperature of the stable. They should be 
fed, watered, and milked regularly, by the same milkers, when practi- 
cable, and be carded daily when kept up. 
DIFFERENCE IN YIELD OF COWS. 
Mr. Lewis states that he has made many experiments on his own 
farm to test the value of the milk of cows at different ages for the 
‘manufacture of butter and cheese. He finds that the milk of cows 
from six to ten years old will produce 40 to 60 per cent. more cream 
than the milk of their offspring two years old, and that the specific 
gravity of the milk of old cows is 8 to 10 per cent. less than that of 
the milk of two-year-old heifers, the animals being fed and treated 
alike. 
A writer in one of the western agricultural journals says that, on 
emigrating to this country from the Ayrshire region, he was aston- 
ished at the great inequality of yield among American cows, a single 
cow, perhaps, giving twenty-five quarts of milk daily, and six others of 
the same herd not more than ten or twelve quarts each, while Ayrshire 
cows in their native country will average twenty to twenty-five quarts 
daily for the first.-three months after coming in. 
MILK SUPPLY OF CITIES AND TOWNS. 
The milk supply of our cities and towns involves sanitary and eco- 
nomical considerations of the highest importance. The accompanying 
abstracts of reperts of milk inspectors, and of others conversant with 
the milk business in various sections of the country, illustrate the mag- 
nitude of the interests involved in this branch of dairy farming, the 
abuses connected with it, and the methods used to counteract these 
abuses, the frequent disproportion between prices at first hands and 
the cost to city or town consumers, and the comparative profits to pro- 
ducers of marketed milk and miJk manufactured into butter or cheese. 
Inspection of mitk in Boston.—The first act to punish fraud in the sale 
of adulterated milk in Massachusetts was passed by the legislature of 
that State during the winter of 1856. This act authorized any person 
to make complaint and to prosecute for violations of its provisions; but, 
as far as is known, no complaints were made. The law accomplished 
nothing. In the winter of 1859 a new law was enacted, which provided 
for the appointment in towns and cities of inspectors of milk, whose 
duty it should be to detect adulterations of milk and secure the convic- 
tion and punishment of offenders. Boston was the first municipality 
in the State to appoint an inspector whose time should be exclusively 
devoted to the performance of this duty, and it is believed that it was 
the first city on the continent to make the effort to secure a supply of 
pure milk for its citizens by arresting and punishing the venders of an 
impure article. The office of the Boston inspector was established 
August 10, 1859. 
