THE OX AND THE DAIRY. 143 



managed with anything like regularity on a judicious system. 

 It must always be recollected, that cows on poor, though exten- 

 sive pasturage, give but little milk ; that no considerable 

 produce can be expected, be the cow what she may, unless 

 she is supplied with a sufficiency of good succulent food ; 

 and that, when a man owns only a small plot of ground, this 

 can only be produced by a well-ordered system of crops in 

 rotation. " If," says a writer, " a labourer, who has an allot- 

 ment of half an acre of good light land, would entirely devote 

 it to raise food for a cow, his wife and children cutting the 

 food, and tending the cow in a small yard with a shed, or in 

 any cow-stall, (he would find that he had much greater clear 

 profit than if he had sown his land every year with wheat, 

 and had always a good crop, which last supposition is 

 impossible,) there would be no better stimulus to industry 

 than to let a piece of land for this purpose to every man who 

 could purchase a cow, and feed it by soiling." 



We may here add, that the green food should be cut twelve 

 or twenty hours before it is given to the cattle, and not wet 

 with dew or rain ; it should be supplied at intervals, and in 

 moderation, as horned cattle are apt to feed voraciously, and 

 the fresh green food is liable to ferment in the paunch, 

 endangering the animal's life from the gases evolved, which 

 distend the abdomen prodigiously. It is but lately that we 

 saw a fine cow which died from this cause : she was left safe 

 in her paddock in the evening, but during the night she 

 contrived to get at some clover, or lucern, in an adjacent 

 inclosure, of which she ate voraciously ; in the morning she 

 was found dead, and swollen. 



In the neighbourhood of London, where a prodigious 

 supply of milk is demanded, vast numbers of cows, all for 

 almost all) short-horns, are kept upon the principle of soiling, 

 or stall-feeding, for the sake of their valuable produce. We 

 allude to those large establishments in which four or five 

 hundred cows are kept, and where most of the retail dealers 

 in milk obtain the measure they require. There are, indeed, 

 numerous smaller establishments around London, in which 

 the proprietor, who retails the milk on his own account, keeps 

 from six to twenty, or five-and-twenty cows ; and as he has 

 to compete with the retailers who purchase their stock at the 

 great establishments, he seldom resorts to the modes of 

 adulteration, which are commonly practised by the ordinary 

 retailers : not that a little water may not be added ; but if this 



