96 THE COMMON SENSE OF THE MILK QUESTION 



ground, but later, when he comes to the other cows, 

 he does not pursue the same course. It would be 

 interesting to know just why he did it in the case of the 

 first cow; perhaps only because that is the custom, 

 for it is not to be supposed that Bill knows that there 

 are hundreds and thousands of bacteria secreted in 

 the teats since the last milking, and that these should 

 be "milked out" before any of the milk should be 

 allowed to enter the pail. Bill is not a bacteriologist, 

 as we have already observed. 



Bill does not know that the cows ought to have been 

 very thoroughly brushed; that the udders and teats 

 ought to have been carefully washed, as weU as the 

 tails, in some good antiseptic wash; that his own 

 hands ought to have been similarly treated and the 

 dirt removed from under the finger nails; that the 

 pails ought to have been differently made in the first 

 place and that the very best of pails need to be per- 

 fectly sterilized before the milking, preferably by 

 steam power. He does not know that as the cows 

 whisk the flies away from their own bodies with their 

 tails they are filling the milk with bacteria and dirt 

 which drop from their own hairs and his clothes ; that 

 the flies are busy carrying bacteria from the mamu-e 

 heap into the milk ; that the shed is not a fit place for 

 milking cows in. Bill has been milking cows for up- 

 wards of thirty years and he never heard that there 

 was any necessity for putting on a nice clean suit to 



