Proceedings of the Farmers' Club. 285 



out. "When the cuds heave undergone further chemical alterations in 

 the second stomach, a further door opens its portals and the stranger 

 passes into a tliird receptacle, when the green color is lost for a creamy 

 hue and consistence. Lastly, in the fourth, the renet or aboraosis, 

 tlie rich, thick chyle is coagulated by contact with an acid fluid, when 

 it is ready for use. Xext day, having been eerated in the lungs, it 

 commingles with arterial blood and becomes beef. It is a chemico- 

 vital process, which science explains but cannot imitate. Milk is 

 secreted from the circulating blood and not directly from tlie food 

 sup])lied the animal, and conducted to the lactic recej)tacles in the bag. 



There is a wide diiference between social freedom and social restraint, 

 even among dumb beasts. In open air, cows have fine health. If 

 several are confined together in badly ventilated stables, disease 

 develops. Large numbers in small areas, where tlie product of the 

 land is disproportioned to its occupants, engenders sickness. When 

 one or two hundred are confined to stalls, however theoretically per- 

 fect the ventilation, individual organs become ulcerated, and abscesses 

 are found in the liver and lobes of the lungs. 



Large bodies of cattle ought never to be placed in small lots for 

 feeding, because the accumulating oifal, enriching as it may be to 

 the land, injures the quality of grass by besmearing it so that it is 

 offensive to tliem. Tufts or hillocks bearing a flourishing growth 

 in such localities are numerous, but invariably avoided by hungry 

 animals. By alternating, placing them a while in another inclosure 

 till rains, dews and atmosplieric influences have washed and cleansed 

 the spears and blades, important advantages accrue. Examinations 

 of mammoth dairies in London, especially one, where 400 cows were 

 stalled some hygiene facts were gathered of practical value to 

 farmers. Although they were large, sleek, noble looking animals, 

 tliey did not yield as much milk as the size of their udders seemed 

 to indicate. They were fast to a perpendicular stanchion by a sliding 

 ring, which merely gave tlie poor prisoner a choice of standing or 

 lying down. Having no other exercise or change of position, if any 

 of them escaped organic derangement, it would have been m<^re 

 extraordinary than that tliey should have sickened. Eating, drink- 

 ing, sleeping, and secreting milk was their prescribed service. But 

 milk produced under perpetual duress, could not be as wholesome 

 and nutritious as under circumstances of pasture freedom. On an 

 average, said the proprietor, there was a dead cow every morning. 

 They were milked up to within a few hours of death by ulcerations 



