84 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. [Jan. 



cent of the butter fat. Gentlemen, do you know that the 

 fat of milk is one of the most elusive things in the world? 

 Nervous agitation has the power to almost at once eradicate 

 it. It changes none of the solids of the milk, or scarcely 

 any at all ; but at once the fat leaves the milk upon the 

 occurrence of some nervous disturbance, and no one knows 

 where it goes. It will not appear again in the next milking. 

 Dr. Babcock heard me talk on this question several years 

 ago, and he said that it was such a large domain he believed 

 he would commence investigating it, but he says he has got 

 discouraged. lie has, however, brought out some valuable 

 facts. He is at our experiment station, and one of the best 

 experimenters in America or anywhere. He has taken cows 

 and put them in the stable and has changed their milkers. 

 Every old dairyman knows how it affects a cow to change 

 her milker. I have seen a cow, for instance, greatly agitated 

 at the sight of a child. I purchased a cow that evidently 

 had never seen a child ; she was brought to my stable, and a 

 little child came into the held outside of the yard and looked 

 through the bars, and it nearly frightened the cow out of 

 life. She made frantic efforts to get out of the yard, and I 

 found that that cow would be so disturbed whenever she 

 saw a child that the fat was almost completely eliminated 

 from her milk, and yet she gave as high as five or six per 

 cent of fat in her natural milk. 



These things lead me to say this : that, a wise student of 

 the cow commences by studying the temperament that she is 

 built on. That is largely a nervous temperament. As you 

 breed, your breeding enhances the power of the nervous 

 temperament of that animal. Now, I want to be under- 

 stood that when I say " nervous" I do not mean excitable; 

 I do not mean nerveless, but I mean nervous; that is, 

 having nerve power. You say a man is a man of large 

 nerve. What do you mean? Do you mean he is very 

 excitable? No, you mean he is a man of large nervous 

 power. He is a man, however, with a very large and en- 

 hanced nervous machinery, and if you carry him to the 

 point of excitability he is much more excited than a man of 

 less nervous power. So it is with the cow. She should bo 

 treated kindly and gently, and never allowed to get excited ; 



