to health, and it seems unfortunate that
the ordinary milk producer should, in a great many cases, take up an
antagonistic attitude to the scientific methods of handling milk. There
is a body of opinion being created, however, which is likely to alter
this attitude in the next generation, and this is attributable to the
fact that so much excellent work has been done at numerous dairy
colleges and institutes in all civilised countries that the dairy
industry is emerging from a period of rule-of-thumb procedure to its
proper place as one of the technical arts.

_Transmission of Disease in Milk._--It is not to be wondered at that the
handling of milk should now be regarded as a technical business, seeing
that milk-borne disease is one of the commonest with which we have to
deal.

The commoner diseases which have been transmitted by milk are scarlet
fever, typhoid, diphtheria, tuberculosis, sore throat epidemics. Others
of a more complex character have been traced to the same source of
infection, and the clearest possible evidence has been furnished of the
transmission of diseases by means of micro-organisms, which have
contaminated the milk supply.

It is therefore necessary to watch over the milk from the source of
supply to its consumption. It is primarily on the farm and in the
cow-house that methods of handling in a hygienic way should be insisted
on, as microbial contamination increases at a prodigious rate, and it is
the early microbe therefore which does the most damage.

The milk in the udder, for all practical purposes, may be assumed to be
sterile, and the contamination which takes place originates, therefore,
from external sources.

One of the principal means of infection is from hairs which fall from
the cow into the milk, and many of which are carriers of dangerous
micro-organisms.

There is also a certain amount of offensive dirty matter which may fall
into the milk-pail, and carry with it undesirable germs.

These impurities may, to a certain extent, be eliminated by good
straining, but a surer prevention is to have the cow-house perfectly
clean and free from dust, as dust specks are in many cases the vehicles
of disease germs. Cleanliness is, in fact, the essential feature in
modern dairying, not only in the cow-house, but in the milking utensils,
the drainage, etc., and, above all, the milker should be of cleanly
habits.

The flavours of milk sometimes arise from the absorption of
evil-smelling