578 THE HOME, FARM AND BUSINESS CYCLOPS 



these have been reared and fed, and the age at which they are used, and 

 the state or condition of their health. The breeder if he is to be success- 

 ful must indeed be perpetually on the look-out for circumstances and 

 these operating in a variety of ways, form a number, so to say, of direct- 

 ions which are at all likely to exercise an influence good, or bad, as the 

 case may be, on the qualities and peculiarities of his stock. Take, for 

 example, dairy cows. The same breeders set up one class of animal as 

 the best, to the exclusion of all others, without taking at all into con- 

 sideration circumstances which naturally affect their milk-producing 

 powers, just as if breed was everything, and food and housing were of no 

 account. The two should, if possible, be made to work together. Breed 

 is good, if it enables the dairyman to get meat out of his food ; but it 

 should be remembered, that both the quality and the quantity of the 

 milk, and consequently to a large extent of the butter and the cheese 

 made from it, depends more at least largely, as will be generally 

 admitted upon the food than the breed. It is a fact well known to 

 dairymen that some cows have not the slightest pretension to breed so 

 thoroughly mongrel are they are those which give the largest yield of 

 milk, and that of the best quality, when once they are put under proper 

 feeding and management. As regards different breeds for the dairy, the 

 most comprehensive and systematic accounts from anywhere are those 

 which have resulted from the experiments of Professor Brown of the 

 Ontario Experimental College. His description of breeds in their experi- 

 ence up to 1882 is as follows : 



I have never seen, in all the necessary detail, a special work on the 

 breeds of cattle most suitable for the dairy and creamery. The discussion 

 of the subject is even not as plentiful as might be expected, amid all the 

 keenness and ability of our Agricultural Associations. Dairymen are 

 either satisfied with what they possess, or, may be, have been waiting for 

 their Experimental Station to say something on such a big, irregular, and 

 largely uncultivated field of enquiry. I think much of this indifference 

 is only apparent, and not real, as age has not yet given Ontario opportu- 

 nity to test what, under her conditions, are best for cheese and butter 

 respectively. 



To say that we cannot do better than follow what older nations are 

 doing in this regard is admitting that the cow is but a machine devised 

 to produce, irrespective of conditions that, we know, make and unmake 

 higher animal life, and would at the same time.be ignoring what we have 

 already done in improving upon the practice of other countries in the 

 making of cheese itself. It is our place as a young nation to pro v< 



