170 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. [Pub. Doc. 



It is so easy to # be unconscious of outer changes, espe- 

 cially if we live on a farm. Everything has changed in 

 economic relation in the past thirty years. Market demands 

 are different. With the increase of cow population has 

 come a vast increase in disease and danger ; fertility of the 

 soil has decreased, and cost of feed, as well as family 

 expenses, have increased ; modes of tillage, storing of fod- 

 der, construction of stables, and a thousand and one details 

 have been overhauled by modern thought and investigation. 

 Many old ideas and methods have been rejected as being 

 inadequate to the present order of things ; new ones have 

 been adopted ; a flood of light has been poured on the ques- 

 tion by human experience. Yet I can find thousands of 

 farmers in every State who have the same idea of a cow they 

 had thirty years ago, and who really know but little of these 

 changes. Their cows are no better than they were then, and 

 they are making milk more expensively to-day than then. 



They are being pinched sorely ; the old farm is growing- 

 ragged and unproductive ; the boys are only too glad to get 

 away. 



Nowhere in or about the business is there a suspicion of 

 the idea that this is a work of brain ; that it calls for strong- 

 reading, familiarity with the best thought of others, deep 

 intellectual thinking, intelligent study and wise adaptation of 

 means to ends. The young men cannot help but avoid it, 

 for to them it has never been anything but drudgery and 

 unrequited toil. Too few farmers believe that their sons 

 should have the advantage of special training in the short 

 course at the agricultural college or at the dairy school. Too 

 little outlav is made to bring into the homo dairy literature. 

 The standard books of the day on dairy questions, such as 

 Gurler's " American dairying," Henry's " Feeds and feed- 

 ing," White's "Thirty years among cows," and many other 

 most excellent modern works, are indispensable, if a farmer 

 expects to have a well-informed mind concerning this busi- 

 ness. I have known many young men to take new and 

 absorbing interest when such works were brought within 

 their reach, and they were given a chance to see the scope 

 and meaning of dairying. 



