40 MASSACHUSETTS AGRICULTURE. 



dollars per ton, gives iis an annual return of fifteen dollars, 

 while the annual expense or one-third of the outlay, will be 

 eleven dollars and sixty-seven cents, a profit of three dollars 

 thirty-three cents, equal to twenty-eight per cent, and a fraction 

 upon the annual expenditure. 



It would be useless to multiply calculations to show the 

 profits of farming to be large in comparison to those of other 

 branches of business in farming towns, and I have no doubt that 

 these estimates which strike us so pleasantly in all our agricul- 

 tural works and newspapers are in the main correct. Wliy is 

 it, then, that we do not realize these results in the tangible form 

 of cash ? The truth is, that in every such problem there is a 

 loss which is not always readily perceived, and the amount of 

 which cannot be accurately determined. I mean the deterio- 

 ration in the productiveness of every acre of land we cultivate, 

 to such an extent, that we find it necessary to plough under 

 our sod, the profit of this year, in order to enable our farms to 

 yield a profit the next year. But I shall be told tliat the gain 

 finally comes back in a cash form, through the sale of milk or 

 of live stock. Let us then examine this point, and determine 

 as far as possible, the cost of a quart of milk to the farmer. I 

 know of no estimates of the expense of keeping a cow which 

 appear to me to be more accurate than those kept at the State 

 farm at Wcstborough ; and I derive my data for this calculation 

 from an experiment, the particulars of which may be fovuid 

 upon the two hundred and nineteenth page of the last Report of 

 the Secretary of the Board of Agriculture. Assuming the 

 average expense per day of keeping a milch cow from the first 

 day of November to the first day of May, (during which period 

 the cattle are usually housed,)to be as low as in the experiment 

 referred to, viz. : twenty-five cents per day, we have a result of 

 forty-six dollars and sixteen cents, for the winter keeping. The 

 summer keeping, estimated at the low rate of six cents per day, 

 from May first, to November first, gives us eleven dollars and 

 four cents, to be added to the winter keeping, making the whole 

 cost for a year to be fifty-seven dollars and twenty cents. 



If we suppose the cows throughout the State, to give an 

 average yield of six quarts of milk per day for nine months, 

 which I think is a large allowance, and the average price paid 

 to tlie farmer to be two and one-half cents per quart, we find 



