150 NOTES ON FIELDS AND CATTLE. 



"In milk, man's natural food, there are all the 

 elements necessary for the formation of the body : 

 phosphate of lime for the formation of bone ; salts of 

 soda to aid in the formation of the gastric juice and 

 to give fluidity to the blood ; casein to form the 

 flesh ; and butter to produce fat." 



So writes Dr. Muspratt, in the interesting work on 

 chemistry which has been referred to elsewhere ; and 

 what he has penned with regard to man, holds good, 

 we may presume, in the case of other animals as well. 

 There is a limit, however, at which the nicest possible 

 judgment in combining other food will be required, 

 if it be decided to continue a milk diet. Full-grown 

 cattle, we know, have their wet-nurses with advan- 

 tage ; but Buff on mentions, as a matter of conclu- 

 sive certain experience, that foals which have been 

 suckled ten or twelve months are not ultimately of 

 equal value with those weaned sooner, though they 

 are generally full of flesh. Simply then, in practice, 

 it is found that milk pays to a far later period in the 

 nurture of an animal that is destined for the butcher, 

 than in one whose merit lies rather in a development 

 of muscle and bone than in the meat it carries. 



But to return from this digression : mind you 

 attempt not to pot butter made during the succu- 

 lent vetch months ; it will assuredly go rancid ; the 

 stubble (as the London dairymen term it) or October 

 butter is the only kind that will keep sweet; and 

 mind you have a cloth wet with brine dabbed on 

 and left upon the surface of each stein ; as prudent 

 housewives lay brandy-steeped note-paper on the 

 frontispiece of their preserve-pots. The capital Irish 



