CHOICE AND TREATMENT OF THE COW. 47 



coat." In addition to medical treatment, good nursing 

 and linseed mashes as food are required. Diseases of the 

 skin, as mange and lice, are to be avoided by cleanliness 

 and curry-combing, also by good feeding, which keeps the 

 animal in vigorous health, and able and willing to clean 

 itself ; and they may be cured by thoroughly rubbing in 

 tobacco- water. When owing to any wound or disease in the 

 teat blood appears in the milk, the teats should be well 

 fomented with warm water, milked with gentleness, and 

 the following ointment afterwards applied to them, 

 "Palm oil 3 ozs., yellow wax 1 oz., acetate of lead 2 drs., 

 alum 1 dr. To be well incorporated together, and applied 

 daily after milking." Warts on the udder, which are 

 often a great nuisance, are removable " simply by the 

 knife or cautery, or ligature when the cow is not in milk." 

 It must suffice to add here, that for these short notices, 

 the value of most of which has been verified in our own 

 experience, we are indebted to Mr. W. C. Spooner ; and we 

 conclude as we began, by advising that, except where mere 

 nursing will suffice, the veterinary surgeon be consulted. 



(3.) Milking. On the right performance of this opera- 

 tion depends a good deal of the produce which it obtains. 

 It should be effected gently, quickly, and perfectly the 

 first because everything that soothes the animal is bene- 

 ficial, the last both because the milk-secretion is thereby 

 unchecked, and because the last-drawn milk is much the 

 richest. The whole subject, however, was so well treated 

 in a paragraph which appeared some years ago in the 

 Ayrshire Agriculturist, that we extract it here : 



" The milking of cows resolves itself naturally into two 

 heads, viz., how to milk, and when to milk. If every drop 

 of milk in the cow's udder be not carefully removed at each 



