DAIRY MANAGEMENT AND PROFITS. 149 



— as at the sea-side — it oscillates violently with the 

 season and the demand. Hereabouts, I think, most 

 farmers' wives will supply thirty pounds per week 

 for Is. per pound, all the year round. They did five 

 years ago, but things are dearer to-day. Near a 

 town, the milk is obviously more valuable than in 

 the heart of the country, where much goes to the 

 calves and pig-trough : although, after all, we doubt 

 whether this is not as good a mode of disposing of 

 the milk as any other. Animals well treated in 

 their infancy, will repay the farmer doubly. The 

 cattle ripen a year sooner; the pigs attain a start 

 which it requires comparatively little forcing to raise 

 to a fair butcher's mark. The phosphate of lime in 

 the milk deposits and consolidates the bone matter 

 of young stock ; gives that first requisite good fore- 

 legs to a colt, and due breadth of beam to the short- 

 horn heifer. 



'Tis wonderful how chemical agency may combine 

 materials to supply the place of mother's milk, but 

 we doubt whether that forward science can ever so 

 exactly imitate the quality of anything as to supersede 

 the original. The chemist can resolve the diamond 

 to carbon ; but he cannot produce a diamond from 

 carbon, or we are happy to be mistaken. So too, we 

 think of milk ; when it must be replaced, let the 

 chemist do his best ; when it is to be had in genuine 

 shape, adopt it so by all means. 



After all, is not milk the natural aliment ? All 

 other washes, broths, and prepared messes, multitu- 

 dinous and successful as they are, are poor beside it, 

 and this the great breeders act on. 



