MILKMAIDS.

Clutha Leader, Volume II, Issue 74, 9 December 1875, Page 7

MILKMAIDS.

There are, says the c Adelaide Observer,'few more pleasing sights in the world than that of a rosy-cheeked merry milkmaid, with her pail, surrounded by her gentle, lowing, sleekcoated, shapely anipaals. But so far as the present generation of Colonial girls is concerned, milking may be regarded as almost a lost art. A similar tendency is so strongly shewn in America, that in reference to this decline in rural accomplishments a Dr Cross writes as follows : — " lam sorry to report as a result of investigations that a large proportion of the girls of the country, and even of those brought up on farms, are growing to womanhood without learning to milk ; indeed, with these it is becoming a lost art. Even young men who have no prospect of success, except such as shall come by their own labour, cannot milk. To milk a cow seems to be a dreadful thing, for she has horns and can hook, and certainly she can kick, so the work is performed by the old folks, who learned thousands of years ago, when the world was barbaric, and they, the young folks, sit in the house, possibly at work, but more likely reading novels or playing the piano. . The question arises, what is going to be done when the old folks die ? I know that this cannot last long. Twenty years ago a pound of butter barely bought a yard of calico ; now it will buy three or four yards, and it will buy three or four pounds of sugar, and half a gallon of molasses, and cloth enough for a shirt. Formerly a labourer could earn a pound of butter by working a single hour; now he must work three good hours. It seems to me clear enough that if things go on this way ten or fifteen years butter will bring 75 cents or 1 dollar a pound, unless it goes out of use entirely, except on a few farms wkere the young folks shall be go abused as to be made to milk; and cream to be put on strawberries will be out of the question. The new-fashioned butter made of "beef suet, buttermilk, and eggs, comes in at the right time as a judgment on the young folks who are afraid cows will hook and kick."