careful inquiries at many dairies, the fact is rendered certain. Now it is evident that no cow in health would eat such an enormous quantity of slop. By feeding on this unnatural and stimulating food, they are thrown into a state of disease, and for a short time will feed monstrously, and yield large quantities of bad milk.

The dairyman, judging indeed correctly, from the condition and mechanical texture of this fluid kind of food, that its second mastication is as unnecessary as it is in fact impracticable, and apprehending that his cattle will speedily die by an entire cessation of rumination, known by the familiar term the loss of cud, is urged by his fears to give them some hay or other herbaceous food. A cow will eat eighteen or twenty pounds of hay per day. The estimated allowance for those that are fed on slop, is three pounds per head; but we are assured that very few get even half that quantity, and probably, as will subsequently appear, for the best reason in the world, the diseased condition of their teeth renders the mastication of solid food impossible. The greater proportion of these milkmen, it is said, feed no gramineous food at all; certain it is, that those who feed slop, give no more hay than they deem necessary to keep their cattle alive. Numerous men, of good character for veracity, who have relinquished the slop-milk business for conscience sake, testify that such is the practice. But in the absence of names, which cannot with propriety be here introduced, there is presumptive proof that such is the fact. Why is slop fed at all? We answer, because it yields more milk at a cheaper rate, than any other kind of food. The dairyman will at once concede that his object is gain, and that the more slop, the greater his profits. So long, therefore, as he can sell slop-milk, it is his interest to gorge his cattle with the food which pro

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duces it in the greatest abundance. And leaving the inhumanity of thus prematurely destroying the health and lives of his cattle out of the question, he does not by this course of feeding pecuniarily suffer. For when they become so diseased as to be no longer profitable for the dairy, they are sent to the cattle market, and their place is supplied by fresh stock. So far, therefore, as the kind of food is concerned, such, concisely, is the condition of the NewYork milk dairies. With very few exceptions, all the cows are most inhumanly condemned to subsist on this most unnatural aliment; and the milk thus produced, is not only inconsiderately regarded as of indispensable necessity in our households, but is the pernicious sustenance on which we depend as the staple diet for children.

Second. The condition and temperature of the food. We have anticipated in another place, some things which belong to this head, but a few more facts may be appropriately stated under it. The kind of food, we have seen, is the most unnatural; it is now proposed to show that it is eaten in an improper and unnatural state. At the distilleries, the slop is drawn off hot into tanks, at short intervals through the day, and in this state is distributed and eaten by the cows on the premises, and also by those in the adjacent parts, as before it cools it may be transported to a considerable distance. It is considered more drastic at a high temperature, and is preferred in that state, because it then forces itself more rapidly through the system into the milk pail, although when hot it most seriously injures the teeth and general health of the animals fed upon it. As this kind of food, however, is instrinsically deleterious in any condition, whether hot or cold, it is not important to determine which is worst.—When drawn from the still, moreover, the slop is so powerfully acid as rapidly to cor

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rode iron; and yet it is often suffered to run into a second state of fermentation before it is eaten. But without enlarging on particulars, we think it must appear as obvious to every intelligent mind, as it is demonstrable by facts and physiological principles, that this unnatural food in the condition in which it is consumed, cannot fail to destroy the health of the animals that subsist upon it, and so deteriorate the quality of their milk, as to render it unfit for human sustenance.

CHAPTER XVI.

CONDITION OF THE DAIRIES, CONTINUED.

Personal testimony on the subject.-Description of a dairy.- Arrangement of the cattle pens.-Interior of the stables.-Confinement of the milch-cows.-Consequences of this treatment.

It is

In the preceding remarks, the writer has avoided theoretical deductions, because they are less conclusive than those derived from ascertained facts. And while it would have been comparatively easy in prosecuting his inquiries to have received second-hand testimony, he has preferred to be guided by his own researches when he could rely upon them, rather than upon the vague observations of others, which, having been made without a specific object, are often too uncertain to lead to determinate results. obvious, that, in pursuing this course, nothing but the fullest confidence in his own statements, could have induced him to make them public. For if he has misapprehended facts, or wilfully perverted them, or arrived at conclusions which the premises do not justify, in either case it is in the power of every one in this community to obtain correct information on the subject, expose the fallacy of his reasonings, and correct his mistakes. But though such is his position in relation to the inquiry, he fearlessly challenges for it the most rigid investigation. This, he believes, will remove all uncertainty, and lay every inquirer under the necessity of acquiescing in the statements so confidently made.

DESCRIPTION OF A DAIRY.

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Is any one, for illustration, still skeptical as to the pernicious quality of the milk with which he is supplied, or as to the patronage he is indirectly giving the distiller, though he uses not a drop of alcohol in any form as a beverage, let him accompany his milkman to his dairy, and, nineteen chances out of twenty, his doubts will be removed by a full demonstration of the facts insisted upon. If the wind is in the right quarter, he will smell the dairy a mile off; and on reaching it, his visual and nasal organs will, without any affectation of squeamishness, be so offended at the filth and effluvia which abounds, that still-slop milk will probably become the object of his unutterable loathing the remainder of his life. His attention will probably be first drawn to a huge distillery, sending out its tartarian fumes, and, blackened with age and smoke, casting a sombre air all around. Contiguous thereto, he will see numerous low, flat pens, in which many hundreds of cows, owned by different persons, are closely huddled together, amid confined air, and the stench of their own excrements. He will also see the various appendages and troughs to conduct and receive the hot slush from the still with which to gorge the stomachs of these unfortunate animals, and all within an area of a few hundred yards. He will discern, moreover, numerous slush-carts in waiting and in motion, for the supply of distant dairies; empty milk-wagons returning, and others with replenished cans, as constantly departing. Moored off in the distance, he will, perhaps, discover a schooner discharging her freight of golden grain into huge carts, each drawn by four oxen, employed to convey it to the distillery mill, which, grinding at the rate of one hundred bushels per hour, rapidly converts the nutritious substance into slop and whisky, to "scatter fire-brands, arrows and death," through the community.