MILKING PASTURES BONES. 149 



upon them himself and his sons in the field, and his wife and 

 daughters in the dairy except that in the harvest month one or 

 two Irish reapers would be employed. The cows, in the summer, 

 are kept during the day in distant pastures, and always at night 

 in a home lot. During the cheese-making season, which on these 

 small farms is from the first of May till November, they are 

 driven home and fastened in shippens, or sheds, between five and 

 six o'clock, morning and night, and then milked by the girls, 

 sometimes assisted by the men. On a farm of one hundred acres, 

 fifteen to twenty cows are kept, and three persons are about an 

 hour in milking them. From twenty to thirty gallons of milk 

 (say six quarts from each cow) is expected to be obtained on an 

 average, and about one pound of dried cheese from a gallon of 

 milk. From two to five cwt. (of 112 Ibs.) of cheese may be 

 made from the milk of each cow during the year. Three cwt. is 

 thought a fair return on the best farms. In a moderately dry 

 and temperate summer, more cheese is made than in one which 

 is very wet. 



The pastures are generally looked upon as permanent ; the 

 night pastures are sometimes absolutely so, as it is supposed that 

 they have not generally been broken up for many hundred years. 

 During the last ten years the pasture lands have been very 

 greatly, and, as they tell me, almost incredibly improved by the 

 use of bone-dust. It is applied in the quantity of from twenty to 

 forty cwt. on an acre, as top-dressing ; and I was told that pas- 

 tures on which it had been applied at the rate of a ton to an acre, 

 eight or nine years ago, had continued as good (or able on an 

 average of the years to bear as many cows) as similar land top- 

 dressed with farm-yard dung every two years, probably at the 

 rate of thirty cubic yards to an acre. There seems to be no 

 doubt at all that lands, to which inch bones were applied ten 

 years ago, are yet much the better for it. They are usually 





