56 MILKING BY THE MOU 7 . TREATMENT. 



the best-formed bulls, has long prevailed. In this way 

 some progress has, doubtless, been made. 



There is an old adage among the dairy farmers of 

 Ayrshire, that " The cow gives her milk by the mou'," 

 which was slightly varied from an old German proverb, 

 that " The cow milks only through the throat." It is 

 fortunate, indeed, that wiser and more humane ideas 

 prevail with regard to the care of stock of all kinds ; 

 for it is well known that the treatment the stock of 

 the country received for the first two centuries after 

 its settlement was often barbarous and cruel in the 

 extreme, and that thousands perished, in the early his- 

 tory of the colonies, from exposure and starvation. 

 Even within my own distinct recollection, it was 

 thought, for miles around my native place, that cows 

 and young stock should remain out of doors exposed 

 to the cold winter days, to " toughen ; " and that, too, 

 by men who styled themselves " practical " farmers. 



Mr. Henry Colman truly asserted, in 1841, that the 

 general treatment of cows in New England would not 

 be an inapt subject of presentment by a grand jury. 

 There were, at that time, it is true, many honorable 

 exceptions ; but the assertion was strictly correct so 

 far as it applied to the section of which I then had a 

 personal knowledge. Judging from the anxiety mani- 

 fested by those who enter superior milch cows for the 

 premiums offered by agricultural societies to show that 

 they have had nothing, or next to nothing, to eat, it is evi- 

 dent that the false ideas with regard to the feeding and 

 treatment of this animal have not yet wholly disap- 

 peared. But, if little improvement has been made in 

 our dairy stock except that produced by more liberal 

 feeding, it simply shows that our efforts have not been 

 made in the right direction. 



The raising of cattle has now become a source of 



