144 
DOMESTIC AD1MALS. 
of the animal, and the milk is greatly reduced in quantity, and in like 
measure improved in quality, indeed the abnormal heat produced in 
the udder is of itself sufficient cause for rejecting the milk for butter- 
making. In the fall, where the grass begins to fail, and loses its nutri- 
tive or milk-producing elements, "there is nothing that can equal corn- 
stalks as a substitute. The corn should be sown for the purpose. 
“During the winter months the stock should be stabled or otherwise 
sheltered from the severities of the weather for the night, and while 
they feed. And the care, and amount and kind of food must be so ap- 
pointed that they rather improve in condition and vigor than otherwise; 
at least they must not be allowed to run down to poor flesh and weak- 
ness ; for then no amount of attention and good nursing through the 
summer will restore them to full milking capacities. The loss is irrep- 
arable for the season. 
“A very thorough and practical understanding of the next and last 
branches, i. e., the treatment of the milk, and the process of butter mak- 
ing, is much more difficult to obtain, because the knowledge is much more 
difficult to impart. With all the rules that may be given, there must 
be superadded, as conditions for their successful application, the neces- 
sity for close and critical observation. For there are constantly arising 
circumstances to modify the most of such which may be laid down in a 
general system. 
“ For depositing the milk when strained, the tin pail of the capacity 
of about twelve quarts is preferable to any other kind of vessel. It is 
sufficiently large to fulfill all the requirements in that particular ; while 
its superiority over the shallow pan — which is considerably used— is too 
palpable to admit of doubt. The following propositions in point, are 
sustained by facts, the application or pertinency of which, all who have 
ever made butter, or who have been in a dairy with their eyes open to 
the every day phenomena therein, will readily apprehend, viz. : that 
milk, in order to realize from it the largest quantity and best quality of 
butter, must stand in an atmosphere of a given temperature a specific 
length of time, in all cases, in order to perfect it for the churn ; that 
natural or artificial causes, either accelerating or retarding the processes 
of change in its elements from that fixed standard, have their like certain 
results of deterioration, both in the quality and the quantity of the butter 
produced ; that a given quantity of milk, with the greatest surface ex- 
posure to the action of the atmosphere, in a given temperature, will 
change more rapidly than a like quantity in a like temperature, with a 
less surface exposure. The facts in proof, it need scarcely be intimated, 
condemn the use of the shallow pan. 
“ Every dairy-woman has observed the effects of a close, muggy and 
humid atmosphere— such as often precedes rain-storms in the summer — 
upon the milk ; also, of a thunder-storm, also of only partly filling a vessel. 
In all cases named, the change in the milk is much more rapid than when 
the temperature of the atmosphere is even, and the equilibrium of its 
vital elements more perfectly sustained ; and then in pails filled to their 
capacity. In all these instances too, the milk must be churned sooner. 
But there is no method that will prevent a loss of product in quantity 
and quality. 
