Great attention and cleanliness are required in the management of a dairy. The cows should be regularly milked at an early hour, and their udders perfectly emptied.

The quantity of milk depends on many causes; as the goodness, breed and health of the cow, the pasture, the length of time from calving, the having plenty of clean water in the field she feeds in, etc. A change of pasture will tend to increase it.

When a calf is to be reared, it should be removed from the cow in ten days at the farthest. It should be removed in the morning and no food given to it till the following morning, when, being extremely hungry, it will drink readily; feed it regularly morning and evening, and let the milk which is given to it be just warm; skimmed milk will be quite good enough.

The milk when brought in should always be strained into the pans. The cans containing the recently drawn milk should be placed in water about 56° F., which should rise a little above the level of the milk; the animal heat is thus reduced to between 56 and 58° F., and the milk will keep sweet for thirty-six hours even in the hottest weather. This temperature allows the cream to rise with greater facility and with less admixture of other constituents than can be obtained in any other way. Some butter-makers allow the milk to stand for thirty-six hours; others say that twenty-four hours is sufficient for all the cream to rise. After the cream has risen it is to be removed by skimming, and after standing a suitable time is placed in the churn. The kind of churn generally preferred bv the best butter-makers is the common dash churn, made of white oak. Much depends upon the manner in which the operation is performed, even with the same churn. The motion should be steady and regular, not too quick nor too slow. The time occupied in churning 12 or 15 gallons of cream should be from 40 to 60 minutes. When removed from the churn, it should be thoroughly washed in cold water, using a ladle and not the hands. It should then be salted with about one-twentieth of its weight of the purest and finest salt, which should be thoroughly incorporated with it, by means of a butter-worker, or ladle, the hands being never allowed to touch the butter. Twelve hours afterwards another working should be performed and the butter packed in strong and perfectly tight white oak firkins. When filled they should be headed up and a strong brine poured in at the top. It should then be placed in a cool, well-ventilated cellar.

Dr. Ure gives the following directions for curing butter, known as the Irish method: "Take one part of sugar, one part of nitre, and two of the best Spanish great salt, and rub them together into a fine powder. This composition is to be mixed thoroughly with the butter as soon as it is completely freed from the milk, in the proportion of 1 ounce to 16; and the butter thus prepared is to be pressed tight into the vessel prepared to receive it, so as to leave no vacuities. This butter does not taste well till it has stood at least a fortnight; it then has a rich, marrowy flavor that no other butter ever acquires."