74 BOARD OF AGEICULTURE. 



some holes in the bottom and put it over my can. But I 

 want to caution you against one thing, — never aerate your 

 milk with impure air. I have satisfied myself by my experi- 

 ments that the animal odor will be got rid of by passing it 

 throusrh this aerator. You can neither taste it nor smell it, 

 it docs the work perfectly, but it will only do it for you in a 

 pure atmosphere. If you set your can in a filthy cow stable, 

 where you can hardly breathe yourself, and run the milk 

 through, what would you expect? If you did not smell 

 brimstone, you would smell something worse in the milk. 

 Hence, I want you to be particular, gentlemen, if you aerate 

 your milk, to aerate it with air that is not loaded down with 

 filth. Take some air from which filthy vapors are not rising, 

 take the pure air of heaven, and it is good enough for any- 

 bod}^ or any purpose for which we use it. 



Perhaps as short a way as I can tell you how milk keeps 

 under different circumstances would be to relate one of a 

 good many experiments I made five or six years ago. I took 

 from the whole of the milk of my dairy a sample of milk. 

 After stirring it up, I divided that mess of milk into three 

 equal parts by weight, and for the sake of convenience, we 

 will number them as we go along. No. 1 1 aerated by expos- 

 ing it to pure air and cooled it down very slowly to a temper- 

 ature of fifty-one degrees, and I kept it very near that tem- 

 perature. No 2 I shut up in a can as tight as this tube would 

 be with the cover on, at the temperature it had when it was 

 drawn from the cow, probably ninety-nine or one hundred de- 

 grees ; I did not test its temperature, but it could not have 

 been under ninety-eight, I think. It was shut up and ex- 

 posed to the rays of the sun, just as a milk-can is on the way 

 to the factory or to market. No. 3 I placed in a shallow 

 vessel, and put it by the side of a* rapidly decaying ani- 

 mal substance. Now for the result. In forty minutes, by 

 the power of absorption, that milk. No. 3, had taken on a 

 putrefactive ferment, and in thirty minutes ^fter, seventy 

 minutes from the time it was separated from the mass, it was 

 decidedly rotten; it was unfit even for hogs, fit for nothing 

 under the' sun, unless it was the manure or compost heap. 

 No. 2, at the end of seven hours, I found in about the same 

 condition that this was at the end of seventy minutes, spoiled, 



