AMERICAN AGRICULTURIST. 
[September, 
I do not hesitate to pronounce it perfect. We 
make precisely the same quality of butter (ex¬ 
cept for the matter of color) 52 weeks in the 
year. Hot weather and cold weather have ab¬ 
solutely no influence on the milk in the cans, 
nor on the cream itself up to the time of putting 
it in the churn. Furthermore, there is much 
less labor required in the milk-house, and much 
less care in the operations of the dairy. I am 
so well convinced of this that I am quite safe in 
pronouncing any farmer who continues to use 
shallow pans, if he can use deep cans, an “old 
fogy.” The matter does not rest on my own 
evidence alone; it has been tried in many other 
places, and with universally good results. 
Mr. F. D. Douglass, of Whiting, Vt., has 
adopted a modification of the plan, which does 
not seem to me to be so good, but which helps 
to show that the principle is correct. He uses 
for a dairy of 25 cows 50 pails, 13 inches deep, 
13 inches in diameter at the top, and 11 inches in 
diameter at the bottom. He has four water-vats 
13 inches deep, each of which will hold twelve 
of these pails. They are made of the best 
Michigan pine plank, 2 ft. 4 in. wide at the top 
and two feet at the bottom—made tight by 
being painted on the outside and coated with a 
mixture of one part tallow and three parts 
rosin, applied hot. He keeps the water at a 
temperature of from 60° to 68° (which I think 
too high. The Swedish temperature is about 
40°, and I think from 50° to 60° would be better 
than anything higher). For the same amount 
of milk I use only about from 18 to 20 deep 
cans, and stand them in a yat of running spring 
water. He uses them only in the summer. 
Probably he would find caus better than pails, 
and cool water better than stove-heated air in 
winter. However, he has made a departure from 
the old system, and has written some very tell¬ 
ing articles on the subject. 
He has been assailed by the advocates of the 
“patent” large-pan system—a fate which has 
not yet befallen me. He meets his critics very 
fairly and successfully, and wfith some argu¬ 
ments that are worth repeating. The large pan 
in question is broad and moderately deep, and 
is surrounded and underlaid with cold water. 
In his opinion, this is much better than the 
common small pans, and quite satisfactory to 
all who have used it; but he thinks it would 
not be satisfactory to any one who knew the 
superiority of the deep pails. In this I fully 
agree with him. The reason for a chief objec¬ 
tion to 1 hese pans is “the fact of the tendency 
of heat to rise, and the great difficulty of draw¬ 
ing it downward through fluids. We caii cool 
a fluid much more readily by placing ice upon 
its surface than by placing it upon ice. ... If 
vou_ place a can of warm milk upon a large 
piece of ice its top will soon sour, while the 
bottom '7.11 remain sweet. If you place ice 
upon the lid or sides it will cool quickly and 
uniformly, and all remain sweet for a long time. 
... I find that if in any warm sultry weather 
I allow the milk in my pails to extend two or 
three inches above the surface of the ice water 
it will thicken at the top, while the bottom is 
apparently sweet.” He then goes on to say that 
ihe main object is to maintain a right and uni¬ 
form emperature, and that he can accomplish 
this, better by immersing his pails in cold water 
than by using Jewett’s milk-pans where the 
cold water is underneath. Furthermore, it will 
not suffice to let the water rise up against the 
sides of these pans, because they are too wide, 
and. their heat Is withdrawn very slowly in a 
horizontal direction. The milk at the gjdes 
would be cooled, but that in the middle would 
remain warm long enough to become sour. 
Then, again, the pails are much more easily 
kept clean and sweet, which is of the utmost 
consequence. So, also, the sour milk is removed 
more completely and with less danger of taint¬ 
ing the room. The last point, which is also a 
very important one, is the exposure of the 
cream to the drying and oxidizing influence of 
the air. 
He certainly makes a very clear case, and 
probably if he would adopt the 25-inch can 
(eight inches in diameter) he would find them 
as much better than his broader and shallower 
pails as these are better than the Jewett pan— 
and as this is better than the small, shallow 
pan in common use. 
After all, the essential points in setting milk 
for butter are: 
1. To have the temperature reduced as soon 
as possible to G0° or lower. 
2. To maintain a temperature at least as low 
as this. 
3. To expose as small a surface of the pream 
as is practicable to the action of the air. 
The “deep-can system” secures these condi¬ 
tions much better than any other with which I 
am acquainted. By its aid, and from the milk 
of pure Jerseys, we make at Ogclen Farm but¬ 
ter which sells for $1 per pound all the year— 
and is worth it to those who are willing to pay 
an extra price for an extra article. It is eVen 
more simple than the common shallow-pan sys¬ 
tem which is in use all over the country; and 
there is not one trace of a good reason why any 
man who can afford to invest not more than 
$10 per cow for tank and cans should not give 
up the old and very imperfect one and adopt 
the new and very nearly perfect one. 
If this single change could be made at all 
universal throughout the country I should he 
better satisfied with the good resulting from my 
writing than I ever hoped to he. I should be 
willing to rest my claim for having done good 
in the world on any influence I might have ex¬ 
erted in drawing attention to a system which 
could not fail to increase the quantity and im¬ 
prove the quality of the butter made in this 
vast country. I did not invent the system, nor 
was I the first to adopt it in this country, nor 
have I made any improvement in it in anyway. 
My office in the matter has been the very minor 
one of testing, demonstrating, and publishing; 
but I shall be entirely satisfied if I live to see 
the plan generally adopted. The publishing 
part of my work has not always been agree¬ 
able, and if I had had a disposition to “talk 
back,” I could have had my hands full of dis¬ 
putes with people who were not disposed to 
agree with me, and Avho were disposed to say 
so in the public prints. 
The correspondent on whose letter about 
abortion in cows' I commented in the July 
number writes a long and good-tempered reply. 
He has opinions on the subject of what causes 
or what may cause abortion, but they are only 
opinions; and I should refer to the matter' 
again only because it is so usual for a farmer 
to try to “think out for himself” the causes of 
the most hidden operations of nature which 
affect their business. I never knew one of my 
neighbors to have a cow abort that he did not 
set about conjuring up a satisfactory explana¬ 
tion of the calamity. This is all right, and it 
shows intelligence and enterprise which are 
most valuable to the individual and to the coun¬ 
try; but we should remember that no evil so 
wide-spread and so prevalent as abortion has 
been allowed to pass unnoticed by the most 
scientific authorities, and that if the simple 
theories by which an isolated farmer—who has 
had only his own experience to guide him— 
were sufficient, they would long ago have been 
adopted and the remedy would have been found. 
A considerable amount of brain work has been 
devoted to all sorts of agricultural matters— 
and by brains of very respectable capacity, too 
—and whenever we want to know the reason 
for any new development in our practice it 
would be well and wise to begin by reading the 
experiences of our predecessors. 
In the August Agriculturist there is a com¬ 
pendium of the reports of the three j^ears’ inves¬ 
tigations of the Hew York commission on 
abortion, and I think any one who has formed 
a theory of his own on the subject will be sorry 
to see how completely these investigations have 
failed to sustain him. Thus far, all that has 
been suggested as a cause has been for centuries 
in operation—equally where there have been and 
where there have not been cases of abortion. 
My correspondent says in defence of his sug¬ 
gestion about “a leather whip,” that if he don’t 
have that his men will use clubs. I think that 
any man who would use a whip to a cow (or a 
woman) would only use it when he had lost his 
temper sufficiently to strike her with the first 
thing he can reach, and this is usually a milk- 
stool. Such a man is not fit to come near a 
cow, and there is no safe rule but to discharge 
him for the first offence. 
Mr. C. E. Benton, of Sharon, Ct., writes about 
abortions: “The complaint has been common 
here for many years, but is growing less fre¬ 
quent. The only successful medicine thus far 
is fine bone fed with the salt—about as much 
bone as salt. I have known this in many cases 
to effect an entire cure. Sometimes- when the 
bone was withheld for a few months the disease 
would reappear, but would again disappear 
when it was renewed. On my own farm I am 
applying bone manure to. all the land I seed 
down, with the idea that it may supply the 
something that is lacking in the grass itself, and 
thus effect a radical cure. So much for practice. 
The scientific why and wherefore we do not 
yet know.” 
In a later letter he says: “I have had the 
curiosity to spay a cow that aborted last winter 
—a native cow, ten years old, and in good flesh. 
One of the ovaries, the one showing the scar of 
the last impregnated egg, presents a diseased 
appearance. It seems to have burst its outer 
covering in one side, and that portion has an 
inflamed and bloody appearance. I don’t know 
whether this is anything new to others, but it 
is so to me; neither do I know whether it is of 
any value—but it would seem to indicate that 
the trouble does not begin at the womb, as I 
before supposed, but that the egg itself came 
from a diseased ovary. I put it in alcohol. If 
it is of interest to any one they are welcome 
to it.” 
This investigation may be worth following up. 
With regard to the use of bone, it is a significant 
fact that, so far as I know, abortion is mainly 
confined to the older farming districts of the 
country, in which the phosphates are more or 
less exhausted. 
In the August number of these papers the 
types make me say that we reduce our milk to 
a temperature of 50°. It should have been 58° 
—that being the temperature of our water. 
I wish it were 50°, 
