492 = 226 
Practical Agriculture. 
than is commonly understood in the milk and butter producing 
countries of the Continent), although one might suppose it 
to be easily settled by answering, " The best time to drop 
a calf is just when you happen to want it." In dairy-farming, 
say that you want milk in quantity almost the year through, 
you can time your calves to fall any month, from say October 
through the winter and spring up to midsummer. But, apart 
from dairying, there are two great calving seasons, each 
having its advocates. As a matter of fact (deduced by a 
calculation referred to under another section of this Memoir), 
the 3,700,000 cows and heifers of the United Kingdom 
enumerated as in-calf on the 25th of June, represent about 
807,000 heifers added to the herd in a year, drafted and fed-off 
after about four calvings on an average. To account for the 
number of calves enumerated at the Census, or killed for veal, 
and for the number of young cattle under two years old found 
at the Census, it has been found necessary to assume that these 
3,700,000 dams calve in the different quarters of the year about 
as follows : 38J per cent, in the first quarter, 37^ per cent, in 
the second quarter, lOJ per cent, in the third quarter, and 
13^ per cent in the fourth quarter of the year, 
calving. The point in the controversy between the advocates of spring 
calving and calving later in the year cannot be put more 
strongly than by Mr. Thomas Duckham in a paper read to the 
London Farmers' Club ; and I will therefore give the gist of his 
arguments, showing what effect the extensive adoption of each 
system is calculated to produce upon the breeding and milking 
qualities of the dam, and upon the constitutional development 
and generative powers of the offspring ; and setting forth also 
the economical considerations which should decide the question. 
If a heifer is to calve early in autumn, she must be put to the 
bull in the middle of winter, when both heifer and bull are being 
fed upon dry, and, to some extent, artificial food — just the sort 
of food declared by authorities to be unfavourable to successful 
impregnation — while rich, juicy, succulent vegetation is the most 
favourable to breeding. In a few months time she is turned out 
to the pastures, to graze the young and succulent grasses, which 
are precisely calculated to develop her milk ; whereas, it being 
yet too early for her milking properties to come into action, she 
converts the said food into fat, to the injury of her lactic secre- 
tions, and to the danger of her own life by puerperal fever, from 
being too fresh when the time of parturition arrives ; to which 
must be added the by no means trifling consideration that she 
will be heavy in-calf through the hot season when flics are a 
torment, and thus run considerable risk of abortion. "The 
puny offspring, " says Mr. Duckham, " shows that it is an animal 
