many milkmen in this county and in the State. My cows last winter would go to drink and put their noses in the cold water and throw them up, and I had one cow that would not drink for from a quarter of an hour to twenty minutes, and then not nearly as much as she would if the chill had been taken from that water. I think that cold water, if taken into the system, prevents the animal from assimilating its food properly. I believe that the chill should be taken from it, but it does not seem to me that it can be practicable for farmers generally to heat the water to the degree which has been suggested.

Professor ROBERTS.

I presume, gentlemen, you want your tea and coffee more than lukewarm, and my word for it, your cows are just like yourselves. It is all on the same principle, according to the same law. We have been all over this thing, tested it and tested it, and we know that a cow likes water a great deal better when it is about ninety degrees, than at a lower temperature.

Mr. S. A. NEWTON of Auburn. Do you warm the water in the summer season, or only in cold weather? Our running water is below ninety degrees in the warmest weather, and, if it is worth while in the winter to heat it to that particular temperature, why not in the summer?

Professor ROBERTS. Because the cow gets too hot in the summer, and she likes to have something that will use up the superfluous heat. In the winter she has not that superfluous heat, and wants her water quite warm.

Mr. NEWTON. Why not heat the water above ninety degrees? It seems to me you have not got it up to what will be really palatable. Certainly to a man it would be rather lukewarm at ninety degrees.

Professor ROBERTS. The reason for fixing that point is, that, if you go much above ninety, the danger is that you will get it too hot, and the animal will burn its mouth. It is a safe point.

Secretary SESSIONS. Will the professor tell us the best method of applying barnyard manure?

Professor ROBERTS. I should practice applying it in the fall, on the surface where the plants are growing. Our conditions are different in different places, and we have

to modify our practice accordingly. accordingly. We are here to direct things. If they do not quite suit us, we change them. In the first place, there are many times in the winter when there is no place to draw manure. There have been times this fall when the ground was damaged and injured more by hauling out the manure than we should have lost by waiting until spring. I do not like to draw manure on Sunday. I do not like to draw manure when there is a great State convention like this going on. There are five months in the year when never a load of manure, except in special circumstances, should be applied. You don't want to apply manure in May, because you are too busy planting. You don't want to apply it in June, because there is no place to put it. You don't want to put it on corn or wheat or oats, and you don't want to put it on your pastures. You don't want to apply it in July, because you are haying and you have no place to put it. You don't want to haul out manure in August, because it is too hot. take it, you all have some sort of a place in which to store manure for a short time, under special conditions. We began to take out our manure, some two hundred loads, last September, and continued through October and November, and by the last of this month we shall have all our corn ground covered with it.

Now, there are thousands of farmers in this State and in the State of New York this winter who, from the first day of November until the first day of April, are not getting from their cows in the production of milk and butter as much value as the manure. The principal thing for which they are keeping their cows is for the manure. there is no other reason. That should be of it. Put it on the land where it will do the most good. If possible, put it on the surface in the fall where there is a plant growing.

It seems to me saved, every bit

QUESTION. Do you recommend putting it on top of the snow during the winter?

Professor ROBERTS. If the snow is not more than three, four or five inches deep. I will tell you where there is danger of losing it in surface dressing. Once in eighteen years I have seen manure escaping. There was a fall of

rain, and the wind shifted round to the north-west, and the ground was frozen so that it was coated with ice. We spread manure over it. The next spring it began to rain, and of course the washings could not go down into the ground, because of the coating of ice; so they went down hill into the stream. But that is the only time in eighteen years that I have ever experienced any loss.

Mr. STONE.

on level land?

Would you take it out now, and spread it

Professor ROBERTS. Mr. STONE. If your danger of losing it?

Professor ROBERTS.

Yes, sir; spread it onto the land. land is a side hill, is there any

Where you can drive with a span of

horses and be safe, there is no danger.

Secretary SESSIONS. I noticed that the professor in his paper stated that he could feed a cow to give thirteen per cent of solids or sixteen per cent of solids, and she would do it. Does he think that by changing the feed he can change the percentage of solids in the milk in any given case?

Professor ROBERTS. There is no doubt whatever. of that. Smith & Powell have proved it in a hundred instances. Most of you know that they have established a great reputation for the quantity of milk they produce. They were taken to task because, as it was said, their milk was poor. They went to work to improve its quality, and every attempt they made proved a success not only in changing the solids but increasing the percentage of butter. Cows that would not give three per cent of butter fat were easily transformed into cows that readily gave three and a half or four per cent right along.

Secretary SESSIONS. How did they do it?

Professor ROBERTS. Instead of feeding too rich food in nitrogenous matter and carbonates, they used oats and wheat.

Mr. STONE. Do you understand that fat cows give very poor milk, and that lean cows give rich milk?

Professor ROBERTS. You can improve the quality of the milk very much by feeding. You cannot do it in a short time. A cow has got to work according to the law that is

bred into her. It is just like a boy that has got into bad habits. He gets going in a certain way, and it takes some time to reform him and get him right.

Mr. STONE. I had some experience in feeding a small amount of grain, corn fodder and some grass to a Jersey COW. I got a small quantity of milk, but I could not see but that the cream was just about as thick as if she had been grained more heavily. I am well aware that by increasing the feed we can increase the amount of milk, but the question is, whether we get more cream. I have about made up my mind that increasing the feed increases the amount of milk more than it does the cream.

Professor ROBERTS. It is more likely to, but you can increase the butter fat.

Mr. BOWKER. Where doctors disagree, I do not know what we laymen are going to do. Some of us were at Fitchburg last year, and we remember that Professor Cooke of the experiment station, and Mr. Douglas, whose lecture we all prized very highly (he has now passed to the other side), got into a very animated discussion over this question of heating water for cattle. Mr. Douglas took the ground that water should be heated; Professor Cooke, as our secretary will remember, said he could prove by his experiments and records that his cows gave as much milk when they drank cold water, but were not exposed to the weather, as they did when they drank warm water.

Professor ROBERTS. What was the temperature of the warm water?

Mr. BowKER. The chill was taken off. So much for that point. I am not here to criticise Professor Roberts; I only want to make these remarks to bring out the point more clearly. You have just stated that we can increase the per cent of solids by the food that we give. Now, am I correct in understanding you to say that you can also change the percentage of the fat and caseine by improving the quality of the food fed?

Professor ROBERTS.

That is not so certain.

Mr. BowKER. I think some of those around me understood you to say that you could increase the fat by feeding a different quality of food.

Professor ROBERTS. There are some experiments which seem to indicate that, but we have not evidence enough to show that we increase the butter fat when we increase the total amount of solids.

Mr. BowKER. I was afraid that there would be a disagreement upon that point, because I remember being present at a meeting in Connecticut two or three years ago when this question came up, and Professor Johnson said that there was only one record that showed that the quality of the food would change the proportions of caseine and fat. He said that if we wanted butter, we must have a butter cow; that if we wanted cheese, we must have a cheese cow. Is that correct, Mr. Sessions?

Secretary SESSIONS. Perfectly.

Mr. BOWKER. I rose simply to bring out this point, because it is really a nice point, and one which we ought to understand.

Professor ROBERTS. I think you will find some experiments carefully conducted in Germany, which seem to prove, or seem to show (it takes more than one experiment to prove a thing), that where they fed palm-nut meal they did change the amount of butter fat.

Mr. BOWKER. That was the experiment to which Professor Johnson referred. He said that was the only experiment on record, where they fed that palm-nut meal.

Governor HOARD. I am very glad that this question has come up, because I think I can throw a little ray of light upon it. I have been very much perplexed for a number of years with the situation, the evident teachings of scientific experiments and the evident cross-teachings of certain experiments made by feeders and breeders; but I have been investigating it for a few years, and I have come to the conclusion that, if we would first determine what the percentage of limitation is in the cow, we would then have some guide by which we could determine the possible change of percentage. What I mean by "the percentage of limitation" is this. For instance, we will suppose that the limit in a cow is 4 per cent of fat, 3.5 per cent of caseine, 1.5 per cent of albumen, and 4.70 per cent of milk sugar. We will suppose, I say, that that is her limitation of per