85 
From information obtained from some of the principal 
cow-keepers in the neighbourhood of Sheffield, I find that 
a good cow will give, on an average, 2,000 quarts of milk 
during the first two months after calving, 1,000 quarts 
during the next three months, 330 quarts during the next 
one month following, and after this time about eight quarts 
per day for seven months more ; she will then become dry 
for two months, and calve again : in the whole fifteen 
months, therefore, she will have given 5,000 quarts, or 
1,000 gallons per annum. This milk having a specific 
gravity of 1.0324 will be about 10,324 lbs. in weight, and 
will contain 
Dry caseine 722 lbs., equal to 2,578 lbs. of raw flesh. 
Butter 402 lbs. ) 
Sugar 239 lbg jequalto5211bs.of fat. 
Hence the cow is capable of producing in milk, nutritive 
and fattening ingredients equal in amount to those contained 
in 3,099 lbs. of butchers' meat in one year ; while cows 
feeding in succession, and consuming an equal amount of 
food to the milch cow, can only assimilate 865 lbs. in the 
same time, or which is very little more than one-fourth the 
quantity above-named. The amount of produce consumed 
by the milch cow will be something like the following, viz., 
ten tons of turnips, two tons of hay, two quarters of oats, 
five and a half bushels of beans, with chopped straw ad 
libitum. The amount of nitrogen contained in the whole 
of these substances is 170 lbs., and the amount of the same 
element contained in the nutritive constituents of its milk 
no less than 125 lbs. Hence, in this instance, we have 
but 45 lbs. expended in the vital animal processes, and a 
comparatively small amount wasted from the food consumed. 
The production of milk, then, simply considered as a means 
of rendering useful the nutritive constituents of plants, is 
more economical than the production of flesh, in the pro- 
