In the first place, a great deal depends on having pure, clear milk to start with, and to secure that we think a warm, clean shelter and good food should be provided for the animals. Aside from good hay, free from mustiness, they should have as large a supply of roots--beets, pumpkins, carrots, or potatoes, whichever is the most convenient, or some of all--as you can furnish; but whatever is given should be entirely free from decay, if you would have a healthy cow and pure milk. The milk will receive no unnatural flavor from any or all of these roots; but no skill can conceal the use of cabbages or turnips, however small the quantity. We know many affirm that they invariably give them to their milch cows and perceive no disagreeable taste in the milk from their use. Judging from much of the butter found in our markets, we can easily believe that cabbages and turnips were lavishly fed to the cows from whose milk the butter was made; and how any one can fail to notice the unpleasant flavor given by such food we cannot understand. Still, we will not quarrel with those who choose to use these esculents so long as our cows are not fed with them and we are not obliged to eat the butter. Warm food, at least once a day, is not only good for the animal, but insures a better quality and larger quantity of milk and butter. It is very little trouble to put a large kettle over the stove or range early in the morning, and boil such small potatoes as are not nice for table use, or a few carrots, together with all the parings of potatoes or the rind of pumpkins left from cooking. When they have become soft, mash with a long-handled masher, such as any boy of ten has sufficient skill to make; then thicken the water in which they were boiled with a few handfuls of “shorts” or coarse barley or oatmeal; corn meal will decrease the quantity of milk and fatten the cow. Give your cows a generous feed of this _mush_ once a day at least, and they will amply repay your care by increasing and enriching the supply of milk. With your cows thus fed, kept dry and warm, well cleaned and curried,--for a cow needs that care as much as a horse,--you will have good milk, and from it cream which, with proper care, can be as readily made into _good_ butter in winter as in summer.