FARM BUILDINGS 203 



large crops of grain furnished straw enough to 

 keep this exercising yard fairly tidy. I had a good 

 deal of doubt about the advisability of such a yard, 

 for someone had stated in one of the agricultural 

 journals that the health of the cattle in it and es- 

 pecially of the horses over it would be greatly en- 

 dangered by bacteria and by the gases. As a pre- 

 caution I had the floors of the horse stables above 

 this yard made practically water tight and gas- 

 proof by using asphalt and tarred paper liberally 

 between two layers of the double floor. 



It is almost funny now to think how excessive 

 this precaution was. When Professor Raymond 

 Pearson one of my former students, in 1911 

 Commissioner of Agriculture for New York, and 

 now President of the Iowa State College of Agri- 

 culture and Mechanics Arts was selected to be 

 the head of the Dairy Department, he placed 

 double doors between the cow stable and the milk 

 receiving room, thereby forming a vestibule to 

 keep the microbes from passing from the stable to 

 the milk receiving room. Upon making a com- 

 parative test of the air in this fortified milk room 

 and in the covered barn yard, by exposing petra 

 plates, it was found that the air in the covered 



