176 THE dairyman's manual. 



stem four or five feet Ingli. The stable and yard were 

 redolent with the perfume of these roses, and of helio- 

 tropes and other sweet-scented flowers. The dairy- 

 house was embowered with roses and other flowers. The 

 batter sent to the Paris market every day was packed in 

 boxes with fresh green leaves and a quantity of roses 

 spread upon the linen cover over the butter. Without 

 going quite so far as this French dairyman, whose butter 

 is sent to Paris, London and Vienna, and, packed in 

 casks of brine, to the East Indies, the American dairy- 

 man should at least i^reserve his stable free from the ill 

 odors so common to these buildings. It has- been said in 

 regard to scents that the best odor is the absence of 

 scent, and this certainly applies to a butter dairy from 

 the beginning to the ending. For as *^good wine needs 

 no bush" so good butter needs no perfume more than 

 its own natural sweetness and pure agreeable aroma. 



Nevertheless, the presence of a green lawn and flowers 

 about a stable would certainly tend to the preservation of 

 that perfect cleanliness which is the great secret of success 

 in the dairy. And it might be a most yaluable addition to 

 the cow stable as an inducement to keep all other things 

 consistent with it. A lady visitor to the author's dairy, 

 placing her hand upon one of the well-brushed and clean- 

 skinned cows, remarked : ''Why, everything is as clean 

 and neat as a parlor; it seems so strange and unlike a cow 

 stable." It was certainly our wish and effort to keep 

 the stable ahvays so, but it must be admitted that this 

 visit was made at the time when the daily cleaning had 

 just been completed, the floor neatly littered with cut 

 straw and leaves, the gutter filled with fresh dry swamp 

 muck and dusted over with plaster, and the cows 

 brushed and carded for the evening milking. A glass 

 of fresh milk newly drawn from a cow under such circum- 

 stances is a delicacy, w^hile it would be wholly repugnant 

 under the too common circumstances prevalent in cow 



