540 HANDT-BOOK OF HUSBANDRY ^ 



" and dairy room is of no small importance. In very large butter 

 " dairies, a building is devoted exclusively to this department. 

 " This should be at a short distance from the yard or place of 

 " milking, but no further than is necessary to be removed from 

 *' all impurities in the air arising from it, and from all low, damp 

 " places, subject to disagreeable exhalations. This is of the 

 •■' utmost importance. It should be vi^ell ventilated, and kept con- 

 " stantly clean and sweet by the use of pure water ; and espe- 

 " cially, if milk is spilled, it should be washed up immediately 

 " with fresh water. No matter if it is but a single drop, if allowed 

 " to soak into the floor and sour, it cannot easily be removed, and 

 " it is sufficient to taint the air and the milk in the room, though 

 " it may not be perceptible to the senses. 



*' In smaller dairies, economy dictates the use of a room in the 

 " house ; and this, in warm climates, should be on the north side, 

 *' and used exclusively for this purpose. I have known many to 

 " use a room in the cellar as a milk-room ; but very few cellars 

 *' are at all suitable. Most are filled with a great variety of 

 " articles which never fail to infect the air. 



" But if a house cellar is so built as to make it a suitable place 

 " to set the milk, as where a large, dry, and airy room, sufficiently 

 " isolated from the rest, can be used, a greater uniformity of 

 ''temperature can usually be secured than on the floor above. 

 " The room, in this case, should have a gravel or loamy bottom, 

 " uncemented, but dry and porous. The soil is a powerful 

 " absorbent of the noxious gases which are apt to infect the atmos- 

 " phere near the bottom of the cellar. 



" Milk should never be set on the bottom of a cellar, if the 

 " object is to raise the cream. The cream will rise in time, but 

 " rarely or never so quickly or so completely as on shelves from 

 " five to eight feet from the bottom, around which a free circula- 

 " tion of pure air can be had from the latticed windows. It is, 

 " perhaps, safe to say that as great an amount of better cream will 

 " rise from the milk in twelve hours, on suitable shelves, six feet 

 " from the bottom, as would be obtained directly on the bottom 

 " of the same cellar in twenty-four hours." 



