> MILCH COWS. 193 



The chairman of your committee attended the old Middlesex 

 Agricultural Fair held at Concord, on the 17th inst., and was 

 very happy to observe that the farmers had paid special atten- 

 tion to the raising oif heifers, the exhibition of such animals 

 being superior to that of any previous year. 



In this Commonwealth, in 1860, statistics inform us that 

 there were 135,000,000 quarts of milk consumed as food — 

 103,000,000 made into butter, and 20,000,000 into cheese. 

 Milk contains in solution not only a due proportion of carbon, 

 hydrogen, oxygen and nitrogen, but all the other elements 

 necessary for the construction of bone, nerve, <fcc., and is hence 

 always a proper food in all circumstances of health. When 

 we take into account the dependence of our juvenile population 

 on the lacteal secretions of the milch cow for sustenance, it 

 will be seen that milk plays a most important part in our nutri- 

 tive economy. The milch cows of Middlesex County are never 

 fed on the abominations which, converted into milk in New 

 York and other large cities, prove so blighting and deadly to 

 infancy and childhood. 



Pure, sweet milk is an article of prime necessity, and is so 

 considered everywhere over the civilized world ; and the first 

 object of every agricultural association, it has been well 

 remarked, should be to improve the products of the dairy. 

 The transactions of our local agricultural societies, as annually 

 published, sufficiently attest that this all important object has 

 always received its due share of attention from us. It has been 

 remarked that cattle when well treated afford the means of 

 keeping up the fertility of a farm ; and generally a cattle district 

 grows richer and more fertile every year, while a grain district, 

 without the introduction of foreign manures, grows poorer. 



Manure as afforded by animals is the great source of fertility 

 and renovation for land. By the help of the animal economy 

 we are able to restore to the soil, in the state of plant food, a 

 large portion of these constituents taken from it by the process 

 of vegetation. The close dependence of the animal and the 

 vegetable kingdoms upon each other, and thg difficulty of suc- 

 cessfully perfecting the one without the other, has been recog- 

 nized by all enlightened agriculturists as the foundation of all 

 good farming. From a neglect of this dependence, already the 



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