The character of the food will decide the nature and healthfulness of the milk. The best food for milch cows is bran or middlings mixed with well-seasoned and sweet-cut hay, and this mixture thoroughly scalded and saturated with boiling water; a little flaxseed oil cake, should be added occasionally, for it enriches the milk and keeps the cattle in good condition; during the day the cows should be in the open air; they should not be irritated by dogs, or made to run or trot; these things will affect the milk injuriously. To feed cows on kitchen garbage or swill of any sort will taint the milk so that the offensive odors of the swill can be readily detected, especially after the milk has stood awhile; such milk is particularly dangerous to infants and should at once be discontinued. Distillery slops are often fed to cattle in large cities; these are not only productive of poisonous milk but also injure the cattle so that they become salivated and lose their teeth after a few years of this diet. Brewers’ grains are not open to the same objection as whisky slops; a certain proportion of brewers’ grains added to the cut food increases the flow of milk. In all large towns there are families who keep one or two cows and who sell the milk as a means of making a livelihood: as a rule these cattle are fed on swill, and not upon the best quality of food, and although this milk is recommended as being pure and one cow’s milk, it is as a rule not good, for the stalls and the food do not come up to the requirements for wholesome milk. I have always found a healthier and purer milk from the dairies run on a large scale, and outside of the centers of population. The cattle look healthier, have better food, good pasturage and pure country air, and if the milk is properly chilled or cooled off before it is poured into the wagon cans, country dairy milk is to be greatly preferred over city milk. The animal heat should have left the milk before it is put into cans for transportation, for it is the animal heat in tightly closed vessels which causes the chemical changes that encourage the development of organic milk poisons or so-called _ptomaines_. Milk promiscuously mixed from a group of apparently healthy cows is preferable to that of one cow, and for several reasons; the honesty of dairymen is doubtful, for they will not take the extra trouble to keep the milk of one cow apart when the cows are being milked; again tuberculosis or consumption in all its stages is a common disease among cattle, and quite often a milch cow has tuberculosis when she seems healthy. If a child should subsist on the milk from a tuberculous cow, serious consequences would undoubtedly ensue, but if this milk had been mixed with that of thirty or forty healthy cows, the danger of infection would be correspondingly lessened.