64 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. 



ceeded in making good butter with this cheap and undesir- 

 able kind of material. Their cows must be exceptional. 

 The best feed is not too good for a milch cow. As Dr. 

 Wakefield has just said, early-cut hay, cured well, and 

 corn meal, must be the basis for making good butter ; while, 

 as the doctor has just said, a small quantity of some other 

 kind of food, and even a little swale hay, containing some- 

 thing that the cow requires, perhaps, to promote health, may 

 be used to a slight extent ; yet, as the basis, nothing but the 

 best should be used, unless, in exceptional cases, feeding a 

 small quantity of shorts, a small quantity of cotton-seed 

 meal, and a small quantity of corn-stalks, if your stock relish 

 them. If they are musty, the tendency is to produce a 

 mouldy taste in the butter. There is no question about that 

 at all. If the question is asked, " What shall we do with 

 our swale hay, mouldy corn-stalks, turnip tops, etc., that 

 we raise ? " I would say, feed such material to young and 

 growing stock. It will help growth and make bone, and 

 produce a satisfactory'' animal. But when you come to mak- 

 ing butter, please allow me to impress upon the minds of 

 this audience the idea that none but the best can be used. 



Adjourned to evening. 



Evening Session. 



The meeting was called to order at seven and a half o'clock 

 by Mr. Haskell, who introduced as the lecturer of the even- 

 ing Dr. Byron D. Halsted, managing editor of " The 

 American Agriculturist." 



FROM GRAIN TO EAR. 

 Corn is king. Without any exception Indian corn is the 

 greatest grain crop of the United States. For the present 

 year, the statistics show that the yield is not fiir from seventeen 

 hundred million bushels. The vast cornfield that has given 

 this immense harvest is more than thirteen times the area of 

 the State of Massachusetts. Sixty-five per cent, of all our corn 



