he hardened membrane
may be easily felt from the outside of the teat, when the teat is said
to be _corded_. After this the teat becomes _deaf_, as it is called, and
no more milk can afterward be drawn from the quarter of the udder to
which the corded teat is attached.

The milking-pail is of various forms and of various materials. The Dutch
use brass ones, which are brilliantly scoured every time they are in
use. Tin pitchers are used in some places, while pails of wood in
cooper-work are employed in others. A pail of oak, having thin staves
bound together by bright iron hoops, with a handle formed by a stave
projecting upward, is convenient for the purpose, and may be kept clean
and sweet. One nine inches in diameter at the bottom, eleven inches at
the top, and ten inches deep, with an upright handle or leg of five
inches, has a capacious enough mouth to receive the milk as it descends;
and a sufficient height, when standing on the edge of its bottom on the
ground, to allow the dairymaid to grasp it firmly with her knees while
sitting on a small three-legged stool. Of course, such a pail cannot be
milked full; but it should be large enough to contain all the milk which
a single cow can give at a milking; because it is undesirable to rise
from a cow before the milking is finished, or to exchange one dish for
another while the milking is in progress.

The cow being a sensitive and capricious creature, is, oftentimes so
easily offended that if the maid rise from her before the milk is all
withdrawn, the chances are that she will not again stand quietly at that
milking; or, if the vessel used in milking is taken away and another
substituted in its place, before the milking is finished, the
probability is that she will _hold_ her milk--that is, not allow it to
flow. This is a curious property which cows possess, of holding up or
keeping back their milk. How it is effected has never been
satisfactorily ascertained; but there is no doubt of the fact that when
a cow becomes irritated, or frightened from any cause, she can withhold
her milk. Of course, all cows are not affected in the same degree; but,
as a proof how sensitive cows generally are, it may be mentioned that
very few will be milked so freely by a stranger the first time, as by
one to whom they have been accustomed.

There is one side of a cow which is usually called the _milking
side_--that is the cow's left side--because, somehow custom has
established the prac