The manner in which this result has been brought about may further be seen in a remark of Aiton, who says that the Ayrshire farmers prefer their dairy bulls according to the feminine aspect of their heads and necks, and wish them not round behind, but broad at the hook-bones and hips, and full in the flanks. This was more than forty years ago, and under such circumstances, and with such care in the selection of bulls and cows with reference to one specific object, it is not surprising that we find a breed now wholly unsurpassed when the quantity and quality of their produce is considered with reference to their proportional size and the food they consume. The Ayrshire cow has been known to produce over ten imperial gallons of good milk a day. [Illustration: Fig. 2. Ayrshire Bull “ALBERT,” Imported and owned by the Mass. Soc. for Promoting Agriculture.] A cow-feeder in Glasgow, selling fresh milk, is said to have realized two hundred and fifty dollars in seven months from one good cow; and it is stated, on high authority, that a dollar a day for six months of the year is no uncommon income from good cows under similar circumstances, and that seventy-five cents a day is below the average. But this implies high and judicious feeding, of course: the average yield, on ordinary feed, would be considerably less. Youatt estimates the daily yield of an Ayrshire cow, for the first two or three months after calving, at five gallons a day, on an average; for the next three months, at three gallons; and for the next four months, at one gallon and a half. This would be 850 gallons as the annual average of a cow; but allowing for some unproductive cows, he estimates the average of a dairy at 600 gallons per annum for each cow. Three gallons and a half of the Ayrshire cow’s milk will yield one and a half pounds of butter. He therefore reckons 257 pounds of butter, or 514 pounds of cheese, at the rate of 24 pounds to 28 gallons of milk, as the yield of every cow, at a fair and perhaps rather low average, in an Ayrshire dairy, during the year. Aiton sets the yield much higher, saying that “thousands of the best Ayrshire dairy-cows, when in prime condition and well fed, produce 1000 gallons of milk per annum; that in general three and three quarters to four gallons of their milk will yield a pound and a half of butter; and that 27¹⁄₂ gallons of their milk will make 21 pounds of full-milk cheese.” Mr. Rankin puts it lower--at about 650 to 700 gallons to each cow; on his own farm of inferior soil, his dairy produced an average of 550 gallons only.