g should be performed as soon as each pail is filled with
milk, and pails of milk should never be allowed to stand around in the
barn back of the cows, but rather should be taken at once to the
milk-room, where it can be strained before any further contamination
takes place.

Then the milk should be cooled, and this, to be effective, must be done
in such a way that the temperature of the milk shall at once fall to
fifty degrees or less. It is well known that a forty-quart can of milk
lowered into spring water cools slowly on the outside, but that hours
will pass before the inside of the can has its temperature lowered
appreciably. Meanwhile, bacterial growth has started, and that milk can
never be as good as when cooled quickly throughout. Special apparatus is
made in which the milk is spread out in very thin sheets over a surface
cooled by ice or cold water to a low temperature. In this way all the
milk is at once lowered in temperature and may then be kept in spring
water until time for shipment. Many examples can be given of the value
of this kind of cooling. A few years ago, the Cornell University
Agricultural Experiment Station determined that a certain milk when
fresh contained, about 4000 bacteria per c.c., and fifteen hours later
at room temperature had 270,000, and twenty-seven hours later had soured
with an innumerable number of bacteria. Another part of the same milk,
however, kept at fifty degrees Fahrenheit, showed absolutely no increase
in bacteria for twenty-seven hours, and was still sweet with only 12,000
bacteria at the end of three days.

_City milk._

The value of pure milk is not a matter of individual opinion on the part
of the farmer, but it is a vital point with thousands and millions who
are dependent upon the farmer for this life-giving food. Unfortunately,
to-day the relation between the consumer and the milkman is so remote
that it is almost lost sight of, and in place of the personal
relationship which formerly existed, which made the milkman proud of
his milk and the consumer proud of her milkman, there is to-day an
absolute disregard of the interests of the other side in almost all
cases. Even in the smaller cities, consolidated milk companies are being
established by which the former independent milkmen are bringing milk to
the central station in large cans, where it is dumped into vats along
with the milk from a dozen other milkmen. Some may be good and some bad,
but what is the use,