at any time. If you maintain the condition of the cow, you do it at a sacrifice of the flow of milk. If you maintain the flow of milk, the cow will lose in condition. Grass will do

both; corn will do one and not both.

If I had a soil every way adapted to its growth, my first choice of a soiling plant to use in connection with the pasture, would be lucern. Cattle eat lucern with very great relish. It will grow more than one hundred inches in a year, on a good soil that is suited to its requirements. It wants a deep, loose, mellow soil, and if the soil is open, so that the roots can run down about eight feet to reach water, it is a delightful spot for lucern to dwell in. You can prepare a piece of land for this, and splice out your pasture so as to carry your cow through with an abundant supply of good grass. But if you have neither, if you have no piece that you can sow to orchard grass for this purpose, nor lucern, take a piece of common meadow, with mixed grasses, and do as I indicated. Cut the first crop very early, and then you can get a second cutting when you want it to soil your cows.

Perhaps I have said as much as I need to in regard to the summer food of the cow. I have said as much and perhaps more than you will remember. I will close, then, in regard to pastures, by merely making one suggestion, and that is this-when you seed a piece of land down for pasture, sow it with all kinds of grass-seed that will grow. It will be better to sow ten kinds that will not grow, than to omit one kind that will grow. And by all means sow Kentucky blue-grass, as one of the grasses, and you will get Barre June grass from it. Never omit this, and never omit, gentlemen, when you stock and seed down a piece of land for pasture, to sow every kind of grass indigenous to your soil. They are the most reliable grasses in any spot under heaven, that I ever saw,the grasses that are native to your soil, the indigenous grasses,I do not care whether they grow an inch high or twelve feet. There is one practice in regard to pasturing that I fear you and I differ about, to which perhaps I may allude, catching the wink of a friend's eye over yonder, with whom I had a conversation, and found that he and I disagreed. He likes to change his cows from one pasture to another. Well, it has long been said that "a change of pasture makes fat calves."

He may have got his opinion from that old adage, but however he got it, or however tenaciously he hangs to it, he is wrong, gentlemen. No dairyman in Barre, or anywhere else, can afford to have more than one pasture, for one herd of cows, and for these reasons. You change a cow from pasture to pasture, and you make her uneasy, discontented. The first thing she will do will be to range over the field, ascertain its area, and the weak spots in the fence; how much food she has, and how good it is. That is before she commences to eat. Why, gentlemen, this is as demoralizing to the cow, as free-loveism is to mankind. (Laughter and applause.) Now you will remember that. The cow ranges over the field looking for feed better than it contains, and more of it, as the other animal ranges over all creation to find its affinity. (Laughter.) Both range over and range back, dissatisfied with their present condition. The one never finds what she looks for, and the other never finds its affinity. Our friend Victoria has found a good place, whether she has found her affinity or not. (Laughter and applause.)

Now, gentlemen, there is another reason why you cannot afford to maintain so many pastures. Your fences cost a deal of money, or a deal of stone and labor. While I was on my way up here, I was struck with the smallness of your fields, and I have set you down as one of the most industrious people I have ever been among. Why, you have got such heaps of stone piled, by which you have divided one field from another, that I came to the conclusion that you were either anxious to get your stone out of the way, or else to have small fields, and a good many of them. Gentlemen, sink your stone out of the way, if you cannot do better with them. Bury them out of sight, as we do any other nuisance, and arrange your farms so as to have just two fields, one pasture and one meadow; and let that meadow embrace the land you cultivate; let your mowing lands embrace the lands you cultivate. I will give you credit, certainly, for industry, for perseverance. I would trust you to get a living on a bare rock, or a steep mountain side. Why, put a Herkimer-county dairyman upon some of the dairy farms I have passed through, and if he had ambition enough left at the close of the year, he would take Uncle Horace's advice, and "go West." Perhaps this

allusion is out of place just now, and I beg your pardon for making it.

Now I will say a few words in regard to the winter food of the dairy cow. I have already occupied as much time as I intended to, and perhaps it would look better if I sat down, but I can say that twenty years ago, I adopted in my winter arrangements for feeding and growing dairy stock, what is known as the Barre system, feeding twice a day. Now, as to food. I commence cutting my grass before it gets headed out. By this means, I get the last cutting in the barn by the time it ought to be cut. I know the rule is to leave it all until all should be in the barn. Here, gentlemen, we make a very great mistake. When grass is in blossom, it contains all the nutriment, all the elements for the production of milk, muscle, fat and butter, that it ever does, or ever can contain ; and if you allow it to stand until after the seed commences to form, it loses in value rapidly. It soon changes all of its nutritious elements from the stalk to the seed, and the stalk becomes worthless woody fibre. By all means, cut your grass for your winter food while it is grass. Let a field of Timothy stand until the last leaf has departed, the seed shelled from the head, and the stalk standing alone in its glory, and it is not half as good as oat-straw,-not half. Cut your grass early, dry all the water out of it, and you have for winter feeding, dried grass. For twenty-five years I experimented on a small scale to ascertain what I could best use to feed in connection with this dried grass, to restore back to the grass its original succulence, as nearly as possible what it contained while growing. I tried to do it at the least expense, and I have come to the conclusion that, on my place, with the little I know about farming, I can do it cheapest and best with mangold-wurtzel. By feeding mangold-wurtzels to a cow each. day, in connection with my dried grass, I turn January into June, to every intent and purpose. The cow has her grass restored to its original quality and succulence, the very food that nature designed she should have all the year round. There is no other way that I have tried, by which I can do this so cheaply, so effectually, so perfectly, as I can with mangold-wurtzel. I never have raised a crop that cost me over seven cents and four mills per bushel, and I have grown crops.

that only cost me five cents and four mills per bushel. I feed these in connection with the last cut hay. At that time, the hay last cut has more woody fibre than that first cut, and the mangold-wurtzel has more water, and you see how they sandwich together. They come in just as naturally as whiskey runs down a toper's throat. (Laughter.) There is the greatest amount of water in the mangold, when I need the most in the hay I am feeding; and as I come to the first cut hay, the dried grass, virtually, grass dried, I have less water in the mangolds. Every man can do this as easily as he can turn his hand over, or just as easily as he can put the hay he cuts to-morrow on top of the hay he cuts to-day. He puts it in, in exactly the reverse order in which he feeds it out, and in which he wants to feed his roots in connection with it.

Now, gentlemen, if any of you have devised any better winter keep for the cow, I would like to hear it, because I came here to learn, not to instruct. I do not expect to tell a single man here anything new, but I expect to stir you up, "by way of remembrance," about some things whereof perhaps you have forgotten.

Now, in regard to the care of the cow. The cow, as we have her in this latitude, is far removed from her native pastures, and we have put her in an artificial position. The cow likes warmth, and I hold that the cow should be kept in a temperature at from sixty to seventy in her stable, when we can do so. But supply her with an abundance of pure air, and with plenty of the light of heaven, without which no animal or even vegetable life can be maintained in health. Milking is a part of the care of a cow, and a very important part. I hold that a cow should be milked regularly; that is, if milked twice a day, the day should be divided into two equal parts. If milked three times a day, it should be divided into three equal parts as nearly as may be. I have always milked twice a day. We commence milking at the same hour, night and morning; we milk by the clock. The cows are divided among the milkers according to their ability to milk; and each milker milks the same cow, first, second and so on, at every milking; so that each cow is milked twelve hours before she is milked again, and twelve hours after she has been milked. For instance, suppose we take an hour

and a half to do our milking, three hours in the day, and I milk Sallie first in the morning, this morning, and milk her last to-night, what is the effect? Why, according to Dabol, -that was the arithmetic I studied,-one milking would be nine hours from the other; and the next, if I reversed it again, would be fifteen hours from the other. You see how easily we can milk hap-hazard, as well as we can do other things hap-hazard, and how easy it is to do the thing right. Again, a cow never should be milked any faster than will be agreeable to her. A cow should never be milked so fast as to give her pain, or make her uneasy. The idea that a cow must be milked very rapidly, is all gammon; it is all in your eye. I admit you may make more froth on the milk by milking rapidly, but you will not get so much milk. If you milk so fast as to give the cow pain, you will lose in the milk and you will lose in the cream. Milk just so fast as you can milk without giving the cow pain, or making her uneasy; but when you put your hands to the teats, milk continuously until you get through.

Another point is important to you dairymen who deliver milk at the cheese factory, for I have observed that you have cheese-factories in this neighborhood. I believe the dairymen in Herkimer County, have become indifferent, careless, in regard to the milk they carry to the factories. I think they reason in this way :-"If a little lump of dirt gets into my milk, you know it all goes in together, and it will be so little in mine that it won't affect the amount much; and suppose the milk is a little dirty, won't it bring clean money?" I tell you, gentlemen, this won't do. In our milking operations we must be neat, careful; absolute cleanliness is the rule we ought to adopt. I have seen men milk when the filth from their hands dripped into the pail. Now the drippings from the filthy hands of a filthy milker, milking a filthy cow, must be pretty near the perfection of filth. (Laughter.) I hold that whoever milks in this way never ought to milk any more milk than he wants to drink himself. Let others milk the rest, so that it may be decent for the customers to whom we offer it, or its products.

One other point and I will relieve you. The cow should be carded daily, while stabled. This is a point almost univer