Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 73.djvu/174

170 In this connection, Chas. W. Townsend, M.D., of the Boston Floating Hospital, says:

The quality of the fat of Jersey and Guernsey milk, aside from its quantity, is in some infants a cause of digestive disturbance; I have many times seen babies gain but slowly and show fatty stools on Jersey milk modifications, even when the percentage of fat was low, while the same babies gained rapidly and digested well the modifications having the same amount of fat, made with the milk of Ayrshire, Holstein or common red cows.

Since centrifugalization was introduced much more attention has been given to breeds giving more rational milk, for the separator removes as easily and at the same cost the fat from a low as a high percentage milk. Hence, the effort as indicated has been to develop breeds which would produce skimmed milk which was nutritious and regarding the manifold virtues of which as a food we need not enter into here.

So highly developed are some of these breeds of the first class that it is worthy of note that many individuals are to be found that will give their weight of milk each month and total butter production for the year, equivalent to one half their weight.

Hence, we find in breeds representing the first class, namely, the Holsteins and the Ayrshires, the qualities particularly desirable in the family cow, inasmuch as their milk is best for infants, and furnishes a perfectly balanced ration alike for older children and adults.

Again, important as are the chemical analysis of milk and urgent as is the necessity of its being delivered fresh and uncontaminated, the question of the vigorous health and temperament of the individual cow is quite as vital.

Let us then again consider the relative merits of the two classes of dairy cows as heretofore indicated, in relation to their claim for excellence in this indispensable particular. Mention will be made only of the leading breed in each class in order to emphasize the illustration.

It is a well-known fact that the Jerseys, as bred and cared for in this country, have a highly irritable nervous temperament, and are more difficult to feed, rear and manage than any other breed.

The Holsteins, on the contrary, are a large, healthy breed of placid temperament, great constitutional vigor, enormous digestive and producing capacity, comparatively resistant to disease, and flourish to a high degree in our trying climate. The same qualities which commend the wet nurse in the performance of the function which the child's natural mother is unable to perform, are those which should commend to the community the cow which now, more than ever, sustains to the infant population the relationship above indicated.

Common knowledge independent of scientific observation sustains the fact that a nurse with poor or delicate digestion, sensitively and