A sample is taken and put aside for the Babcock test and perhaps another for the Fermentation test. Each farmer’s milk is weighed in the _Weigh Can_ and run through a cheese-cloth strainer. The further treatment varies in different plants. The milk may simply be cooled by running it over a cold water or brine cooler and placing it in shipping cans in the refrigerator or in ice water until the milk-train comes along to pick up the cans. Or it may be clarified by running it through a centrifugal machine, the same as a separator, in which, however, cream and milk are not separated, but impurities are thrown out by the centrifugal force and deposited on the wall of the bowl, and the purified milk may then be pasteurized and bottled before being shipped to the city. [Illustration: Receiving milk at the milk station ] Arriving in the city in iced cars the milk is taken to one of the elaborate plants in which it is pasteurized and bottled, if that has not been done at the country station. The machinery used in these plants is getting more and more perfect and expensive and leaves little to be desired as to sanitary requirements and economy in handling. Pasteurizers, bottling machines, bottle-washing machines, conveyors, etc., are wonders of ingenuity, and one needs only to see one of these modern plants to understand that in a large city milk can only be handled to advantage in expensive establishments. =Skim Milk= is one of the cheapest of foods and under proper regulations its sale should not be prohibited. The reason why in times past skim milk has been discredited and excluded from sale was that, as produced by the old methods of raising the cream, before the advent of the separator, it was always more or less old and sour before it was available and certainly before it could be distributed to consumers. Under such conditions it was hardly ever fit for human food. But when produced by the separator and pasteurized and cooled immediately after—within a few hours after milking, which is entirely feasible—it is an excellent and nutritious food for adults and even for children over two years of age. Ripened with a pure culture of lactic acid bacteria, it makes a healthful, refreshing drink, like buttermilk. Only when it is allowed to sour without proper care or control does skim milk, as whole milk does, become unfit for food or drink. On a cold winter morning when men are going to work (or perhaps are looking for work which they cannot find), and children are on their way to school, often underfed, a street-corner wagon or stand where boiling hot, fresh, sweet skim milk might be distributed at a cent or two a glass would be a blessing in any city. [Illustration: Pasteurizing and bottling milk in a Borden plant ] CREAM