COWS. 9 



forfeit the milk. To an Alderney or two in the 

 herd, if they can be procured with a character, no 

 exception may be taken, the first love of the 

 amateur as they invariably are. But it is as vulgar 

 an error to suppose that they all excel as milkers as 

 that every German composes fine music, or that 

 every Irishman's a wit. They have a leaning, un- 

 doubtedly, that way. I have had some as good and 

 some as poor as you could wish in that respect. 

 Their milk is, however, an improving element in the 

 pail ; their cream giving a degree of firmness and a 

 golden tinge that much increases the value of the 

 butter-yield. An Alderney you should buy to calve 

 in the spring, so as to have the summer before her ; 

 in winter, suffering more as a foreigner from the cold 

 than her fellows, her milk will shrink, notwithstand- 

 ing any precaution you may take, or the food you 

 supply to her. Alderneys will fatten very fairly, if not 

 allowed to run too old. The tendency of the breed 

 being, however, to secrete cream, she lays on fat 

 inside, and is so essentially a " butcher's beast," inas- 

 much as she affords an undue "fifth quarter." A 

 slightly pale, almost yellow tinge, moreover, deterio- 

 rates rather from the value of the meat. If you 

 have any rough or moor-land, or a lately-drained 

 field on which the rank coarse herbage yet waves, 

 then it will pay you well to feed it down with 

 Scotch, Welsh, or Irish cattle. 



They fatten rapidly where a shorthorn would 

 starve and a sheep rot. If they be young heifers, 

 bought in autumn, some probably will prove with 

 calf, and in that case will sell well for the dairy in 



