A dairy room should be cool in summer, and moderately warm in winter, so as to be throughout the whole year about 45 degrees in temperature. The degree of heat you will prove by an instrument called a thermometer, on which the degrees of heat and cold are marked, on a tube filled with quicksilver, which rises or falls according to the temperature. A northern exposure is the best, and if it can be so situated as to be shaded by trees or buildings from the sun, so much the better; a milk-house should have no inside com munication with any other building; it should be kept clear from smoke, well aired, and perfectly clean, and nothing likely to give it a strong or bad smell, such as fish, onions, cheese, should be kept in it.

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All the utensils-the pails, hair cloth sieves (for passing the milk through, to free it from hairs and all impurities,) milk dishes or coolers, tubs, churns, made of oak, or lime wood, which is best of all, having no acid in it, and butter prints should be kept perfectly sweet and clean, scalded, scrubbed, rinsed and dried every time they are used, otherwise they will have a bad smell and spoil the butter. Snufftakers, sluts

and daudles are unfit to be dairy women; and no milker should be suffered to enter the dairy in a dirty apron covered with hairs from the cow-house. In some places cows are curried, combed and brushed; and before milking, their udders and teats are washed clean. Now where clean milk is an object, using a brush and washing is quite as indispensable as it is easy of pe-formance. The small holder's wife, who has but one cow, has no excuse for negligence on this point, and yet I have generally seen the poor man's solitary cow much less clean than she ought to be; and as to her milk and butter, kept in a close stinking bed-room-who that had the misfortune to taste, smell, or even look at, the butter especially, would ever venture to eat it? An out-house clean, cool, and dry, even if it should be

In the great dairies of the county of Cork, the use of lime white-wash is objected to, and avoided as injurious to the milk,

but four feet square, is an appendage which the very poorest of you should contrive to have for your milk and butter. The floor, shelves and stools of which should be almost daily washed with hot water, and then dried, and aired.

In most places cows are milked but twice a day, but in some of the best managed dairies, where they are abundantly fed, many of them will require to be milked at noon also. But it is said that milk so drawn will be inferior in quality, as twelve hours are required for the due preparation of the milk in the cow; whatever be your times of milking, however, be sure to draw the milk completely off. By the way, the business of milking should be performed very gently, otherwise it becomes a painful operation. Instances occur in which cows will not let down a drop of milk to a harsh, cross-grained milker, who will let it flow in abundance when a mild good-tempered dairy-maid approaches them. For the same reason, when cows are ticklish they should be treated with the most soothing gentleness, and never with harshness or severity; and when the udder is hard and painful, it should be tenderly fomented with luke-warm water, and rubbed gently; by which expedient the cow will be brought into good temper, and will yield her milk without restraint. It sometimes happens that the teats of cows become hurt and sore, and the milk foul; whenever this is the case, such milk should not be mixed with any other, nor even carried into the dairy.

Dr. Anderson gives these maxims with regard to the management of milk:

1. Of the milk drawn from any cow at one time, that part which comes off at the first is always thinner, and of a worse quality for making butter, than that afterwards obtained; and this richness continues to increase progressively to the last drop that can be drawn from the udder.

2. If milk be put into a dish, and allowed to stand till it throws up cream, the portion of cream rising first to the surface is richer in quality and greater in

quantity than that which rises in a second equal portion of time, and so on-the cream progressively declining in quality, and decreasing in quantity, so long as any rises to the surface.

3. Thick milk always throws up a much smaller proportion of the cream which it contains than milk that is thinner, but the cream is of a richer quality ; and if water be added to that thick milk, it will afford a considerably greater quantity of cream, and consequently more butter, than it would have done if allowed to remain pure; but its quality at the same time is greatly debased. Where butter making is the chief object, this is a valuable hint.

4. Milk which is put into a bucket or other proper vessel, and carried to a considerable distance, so as to be greatly agitated, and in part cooled, before it is put into the milk-pans to settle for cream, never throws up so much or so rich cream as if the same milk had been put into the milk-pans directly after it was milked.

From the above facts you will derive many good rules. You will milk the cows near the dairy; you will keep every cow's milk separate till the peculiar properties of each are so well known as to admit of their being classed and mixed together. A little instrument, called a Lactometer, gives a comparative estimate of the richness of the milk of different cows; the separate qualities are proved by a glass tube-the depth of cream at top indicating the value of the cow for butter.

When it is intended to make very fine butter, reject the milk of those cows which yield cream of a bad quality, and also keep the first milk separate from the strippings, otherwise the quality will be injured.-For the same purpose take only the cream which is first separated from the first drawn milk. Butter immediately after being churned should be thrown into fresh spring water, where it should remain for an hour at least that it may grow firm, and at the end of the third or fourth washing, some salt should be put into the water, which will raise the colour of the butter and

purge away any milk that may remain in it, of which, if any be left, a strong smell and unpleasant taste will be the consequence. Butter thus prepared should be immediately salted; it is a very injurious practice to keep a making of butter unsalted to the next churning, for the purpose of mixing the two together; this mode injures the flavour of the whole, and renders it of too soft a quality ever afterwards to get firm. When the butter is aired, it should be well tramped into the firkin with a round wooded tramp stick of sufficient weight and thickness, the firkin should be filled up to the cross and then covered over with a little of the purest salt, sufficient room being merely left for the head of the cask, which must be well secured to exclude air, and if the floor be damp, let a little unslacked lime be placed under the firkin in order to prevent moisture from being drawn into it. Butter of the very best quality can only be made advantageously in those dairies where cheese is also made, because the inferior milk and cream can be turned into cheese. Why cheese cannot be made in perfection by any of you, is what I cannot pretend to account for: but the fact is that the Irish has rarely, if ever, equalled prime English cheese. Mr. Synge, of the county of Wicklow, has, it is true, succeeded admirably in the manufacture of cheeses; but his success was owing to his having, most meritoriously, made the business his study for some time in England, and still more to his having brought home an English dairy-maid accustomed to making the best Gloucestershire cheese. But it grieves me to add, that this young woman, who might have let us all into the true art and mystery of making cheese (which is much more profitable than butter,) has been unable to resist the love-making of some cheese-eating Englishman, who would have sighed himself into a consumption if she had not gone back to England and married him.

Cream may be kept from three to seven days before it is churned. Where quantity more than quality is desired, the whole of the milk is churned, without separating any cream; the milk is kept in the churn

or barrel for two or three days till it begins to get sour. When cream alone is churned, it will be fittest for removing in eight or twelve hours.

I shall conclude with Wilkinson's excellent marks, by which every one may soon learn how to choose his cow; which I should have thought about before I gave you a dissertation on her milk and butter, for the same reason that a cook's receipt for dressing a round of beef begins with "first get the beef."

She's long in her face, she's fine in her horn,
She'll quickly get fat without cake or corn;
She's clear in her jaws, she's full in her chine,
She's heavy in flank, and wide in her loin.

She's broad in her ribs, and long in her rump,
A straight and flat back, with never a hump;
She's wide in her hips, and calm in her eyes,
She's fine in her shoulders, and thin in her thighs.

She's light in her neck, and small in her tail,
She's wide in her breast, and good at the pail;
She's fine in her bone, and silky of skin,
She's a grazier's without, and a butcher's within.

No. XXIII.

Bees-great advantage from having them.

Regard the labours of the Bee,

Example meet of industry;

Although he roves through Summer flowers,

'Tis not to waste in play his hours,
But to collect a precious hoard

Of honey, for his winter board;

Your grateful care of him then double,

And he'll reward you for your trouble.

No small holder who has a garden, should be without bees; experience has taught us that furze, broom, mus