64 KEEPING COWS. [No. 



when the point of the spear has got along as far as 

 the middle of the barley-corn, you should take your 

 barley and dry it. How easy would every family, 

 and especially every farmer, do this, if it were not 

 for the punishment attached to it ! The persons in 

 the " unkent places " before mentioned, dry the malt 

 in their oven ! But let us hope that the labourer will 

 soon be able to get malt without exposing himself to 

 punishment as a violater of the law. 



KEEPING COWS.' 



111. As to the use of milk and of that which pro- 

 ceeds from milk, in a family, very little need be said. 

 At a certain age bread and milk are all that a child 

 wants. At a later age they furnish one meal a day 

 for -children. Milk is, at all seasons, good to drink. 

 In the making of puddings, and in the making of 

 bread too, how useful is it ! Let any one who has 

 eaten none but baker's bread for a good while, taste 

 bread home-baked, mixed with milk instead of with 

 water ; and he will find what the difference is. There 

 is this only to be observed, that in hot weather, bread 

 mixed with milk will not keep so long" as that mixed 

 with water. It will of course turn sour sooner. 



112. Whether the milk of a cpw be to be consumed 

 by a cottage family in the shape of milk, or whether 

 it be to be made to yield butter, skim-milk, and butter- 

 milk, must depend on circumstances. A woman that 

 has no child, or only one, would, perhaps, find it best 

 to. make some butter at any rate. Besides, skim-milk 

 and bread (the milk being boiled) is quite strong food 

 enough for any children's breakfast, even when they 

 begin to go to work ; a fact which I state upon the 

 most ample and satisfactory experience, very seldom 

 having ever had any other sort of breakfast myself 

 till I was more than ten years old, and I was in the 

 fieldte at work full four years before that. I will here 

 mention that it gave me singular pleasure to see a 

 boy, just turned of sir, helping his .father to reap, in 

 Sussex, this last summer. He did little, to be sure ; 



