39 



possible to get a herd of cows giving extra rich milk. 

 If at the same time the other half of the herd had been 

 selected and bred for the cows giving a thin quality of 

 milk and that testing and selection were carried out 

 for twenty generations we would get a herd of cows 

 giving thin milk, even if all the cows in both experi- 

 ments had received exactly the same kind of food." 



I do not think that any observing farmer would deny 

 the truth of this last statement, although in the same 

 breath he might claim that the food did have a good 

 deal to do with the quality of the milk. 



Now answering the three questions categorically : 



1. The answer would certainly be " No." 



2. The added butter would be obtained from the 

 added quantity of milk rather than from increased 

 richness. But another point comes in there: when a 

 man begins on a test of changing the food, he is quite 

 apt at the same time to take more care in the setting, 

 skimming and churning, and especially w T hen he comes 

 to the weighing of the butter, he will weigh it as soon as 

 worked, before packing and very often before salting, 

 and judge from the weight of the extra butter that his 

 new feed has given him an increased richness of 

 milk. 



3. If the answer to the first question is "Yes," then, 

 logically, the answer to the third should be " Yes." 

 But if anybody were to ask these two questions of the 

 same man on different days, and in regard to specific 

 cows in the same herd, he would probably answer 

 "Yes "to the first, and "No" to the second, for all 

 farmers know by experience that they can not make 

 their cows giving large quantities of thin milk change 

 and give rich milk. In fact, we would consider one an 

 idiot should he undertake to do anything of the kind, 



