448 guenon's method. 



To determine the milking-qualities of a cow many important 

 points have to be considered. In addition to those we have men- 

 tioned, the skin should be free, thin, and may be covered with hair 

 of any color, according to the breed. The tail is by some much 

 looked to, and it is believed that when fine and reaching down to 

 the hocks, with a fine tuft of hair, it is associated with other good 

 milking-points. If in addition to large milk-veins the network of 

 veins seen beneath the skin over the fore quarters of the udder, and 

 the udder itself, and those which pass upward behind toward the 

 tail — in fact over the perineum — are large, they are sure tests of a 

 competent milker. They should be highly developed, large and 

 varicose ; they are irregular, in zigzag lines, knotted, and more or 

 less oblique. To estimate them it is necessary to take into account 

 the state of the cows in respect to flesh, the thickness of the skin, 

 food, general activity, fatigue, journeys, heat. It is necessary also 

 to recollect that in both sexes all the veins are larger in the old than 

 in the young — that the veins which encircle the udder are those 

 which, if the cows are in milk, vary most according to the different 

 periods of life ; though scarcely apparent in youth, they are of con- 

 siderable size when, after several calvings, the operation of calving 

 has given the gland its full development. Finally, there is the most 

 valuable of all methods — Guenon's system. 



GUENON S METHOD. 



Guenon, rising from the humbler classes, and from his boyhood 

 being among milch cows in the vicinity of Bordeaux, narrowly ob- 

 served the relation between the amount of milk secreted and the 

 development of the patch of skin covered with upturned hair ex- 

 tending from the udder upward and laterally over the thighs. He 

 could tell almost infallibly about the exact quantity any cow would 

 give, and the quality. And so may the thorough student of his sys- 

 tem, as it is based upon facts and long observation. It is not very- 

 easy to give intelligibly the whole system, in order to adopt it with- 

 out further guide, in a condensed article like this ; a practical de- 

 monstration will prove more instructive. But the farmer should not 

 fail to become thoroughly acquainted with it, as simplified and made 

 easy and plain in the book with one hundred engravings published 

 by J. M. Stoddart & Co., Philadelphia, entitled How tG Select 

 Cows, by Willis P. Hazard ; they send it by mail on receipt of fifty- 

 cents. 



Ten forms of scutcheons or mirrors have been described, and 

 constitute the basis of Guenon's classification. The surface of the 

 scutcheon is distinguished by the hair turned upward and opposite 



