TABLE G.-Operations of the pound for the year ending June 30, 1884.

TABLE H.-Animals impounded during the five years ending June 30,

1884.

The number of patients treated by the physicians to the poor during the year was 16,121, of which number 5,022 were white persons, and 11,099 colored persons.

As compared with the year previous this shows an increase of 835 in the number of colored patients and a decrease of 325 in the number of white patients treated. The cost of medicines furnished was $2,990.10. The figures in the following statement indicate a very large and an increasing pauperism among our colored population, and the subject is one which should receive careful consideration:

THE MILK SUPPLY OF WASHINGTON.

Sections 2 and 7 of an "ordinance to prevent the sale of unwholesome food in the cities of Washington and Georgetown" says:

SEC. 2. That no person shall offer for sale within the cities of Washington and Georgetown any liquor used for drink, whether malt, vinous, or ardent, or the milk of cows or goats intended to be used for food or drink, which has been adulterated with any poisonous or deleterious ingredient; and any person violating the provisions of this section shall, upon conviction, be punished by a fine of not less than $10 nor more than $50 for each and every such offense.

SEC. 7. That no person shall offer for sale within the cities of Washington or Georgetown, any unwholesome, watered, or adulterated milk, or swill milk, or milk from cows kept up and fed on garbage, swill, or other deleterious substance; nor shall any person offer for sale within said cities any butter or cheese made from such unwholesome milk; and any person violating the provisions of this section shall, upon conviction, be punished by a fine of not less than $5 nor more than $25 for each and every such offense.

Probably the most important article of diet to the human family is the milk of the cow. This nutritious fluid forms the main source of subsistence for most young children, and enters, in one from or another, into the daily food of nearly every adult. Therefore it becomes a matter of first importance to the public to ascertain whether or not the milk supplied for consumption is pure and has not been deprived of the elements necessary for the growth and sustenance of the human boy. It is an acknowledged fact that persons may be sustained upon milk alone for an indefinite period, and the researches of the chemist show us that it contains all the elements necessary for such sustenance. Further, if we may believe the testimony of thousands of observers, laymen and scientists, there is no article of food so liable to adulteration as milk. And then again there is no article of diet so well adapted as a vehicle for conveying a specific poison when once introduced as is the lacteal fluid. There is every reason to believe, says Fox, that the smallest quantity of water containing the specific poison, such as may be introduced by merely rinsing the milk cans, is sufficient to infect a large quantity of milk.

The medical officer of health finds it necessary, therefore, in making his investigations as to the origin and spread of diseases, to go further than the examination of the milk itself. Here is an example:

Fever once appeared in a large public school, and, as no mode of the entrance of the poison could be discovered, it was at first supposed to have arisen sua sponte. The water supply, on analysis, proved to be pure. The milk was supplied from two or three sources, and was not complained of. On making an analysis of the milk, it was found to have been manipulated with water. An analysis of the water from each of the three farms whence the milk was derived was made, and one of these waters was discovered to be polluted with animal excrement, while the others were of undoubted purity.

On visiting the dairy farm possessing the polluted water supply, it transpired that the closet and well were in affectionate proximity, and the former had received the specific poison from one of the laborers. (Fox.)

With such facts as these before us it becomes apparent that in making an examination to ascertain as to the comparative purity or impurity of the milk supply of a city the health officer must go farther than the making of an analysis of samples of the various milks sold. His influence must be felt by the producer as well as by the middleman who comes between the producer and the consumer.

With this idea in mind we have given a limited portion of the meager time at our disposal to an investigation of the milk supply of our city. The production of milk in the system of an animal is at once one of the most necessary as it is one of the most curious processes in the economy of nature.

That the milk from which we make butter comes from the cow we all

know, and we are equally familiar with the fact that it is primarily derived from what the cow eats. These two facts taken together place the cow in the nature of a machine-a living one it is true, but still a machine, which, receiving the raw material of grass or hay or corn, transforms it into a production which is indispensable to the welfare of mankind. Or we may liken the cow's body to a laboratory, in which crude materials, some of which would not be of any service in themselves in sustaining life, are reduced to a form in which they are of the great

est possible service. "It is worth while to inquire a little how this is done."

The most advanced investigations into the structure of the mam malgland reveal to us that a cow's udder is composed, first of all, of a wonderful ramification of ligaments and tissues, which, interlacing each other, support the udder in position. About in this structure blood

vessels pass to and fro, and milk ducts, cavities, glandules, lobules, and vesicles are distributed.

In Fig. 1 we have an illustration of the net-work which is interwov en in the milk glands of the udder, and which sustains them in situ.

If we pass a pliable probe up the inside of a teat it traverses a duct, or tube, which opens into a reservoir communicating with other reservoirs, or with ducts; following one or other of these ducts the probe finally comes to a small saccular cavity, and it goes no farther. Within

FIG. 3.-Lobule containing sixteen vesicles and cells which the vesicles contain.

this cavity and its vesicles and cells the fats of milk are produced, and there are numbers of similar cavities.

In Fig. 2 we have a portion of the udder showing the main ducts and the lobules which are interplaced. A microscopical examination reveals

that these cavities or lobules, themselves irregular in size and shape, are composed of vesicles which also vary in the same particulars.

In Fig. 3 is shown one of the lobules which consists of sixteen vesicles, and it also shows the cells which the vesicles contain; these cells are wonderfully minute and delicate.

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Now the fat of the animal is constantly being supplied to these cells, and, by a process which may be likened to budding, throw it off in the form of cream globules. These globules or buds, or fatty pollen as we may term them, when perfected drop off into the cavities in which they come in contact with and are taken charge of by the water therein, which also contains casein, albumen, and milk sugar that have transuded from the tissues; and they are carried along through duct after duct into the acini or milk cisterns, and finally they are extracted through the teats. The product is an emulsion named milk.

In Fig. 4 is given a view of the appearance of the udder entire after removal of the skin. The vessels are carefully injected and exposed so as to show each material portion in situ.

Left in a state of nature, or when not bred and trained for the production of milk, we find that cows are unable to do much more than support their own calves; and wherever we find a breed of cows celebrated either for quantity or for quality of milk we may conclude justly that its reputation in this respect is chiefly owing to the skill which man has brought to bear one generation after another with a view to secure the sort of animal most useful to him.

In respect of some breeds of cattle, as for instance the Scotch-Polled or the Herefords, the object of several generations of breeders seems to have been less the production of milk than of beef, and perhaps more the quality of the beef than the highest form of symmetry in the animal. In other cases, of which the Ayrshires are the best example, the object has been to produce a breed of cows whose reputation rests mainly upon the large quantity of milk they give, the production of beef having been an extrinsic consideration, and yet again other breeds, of which the Alderneys may be taken as the highest types in this or any other country, have been bred with a view to quality of milk rather than quantity, and beef has been at most a secondary consideration. The Short-Horns present to us the best results yet attained in combining symmetry, size, beef, and milk in one breed; and yet they are apt to swerve too much in the direction of one or two of these qualifications, leaving the others more or less in the background, if the breeding is not carefully watched and undue tendencies checkmated. (Sheldon.)

THE COMPOSITION OF MILK.

Milk contains the three classes of principles which are required for human food, viz, the albuminous or nitrogenous, the oleaginous, and the saccharine, and is the only article supplied by nature which combines all the elements requisite to secure healthy nutrition in a form suited to the young animal.

Milk consists of water holding in solution casein or cheese, sugar of milk, various salts, and in suspension fatty matter in the form of myr. iads of semi-opaque globules to which its color and opacity are due.

Skim-milk, butter milk cream, butter, curds and whey, cream cheese, and ordinary cheese are mere modifications of milk differing from each other only in either the abstraction of one or more of its constituents or else in the variations of their proportions.

Skim-milk.-Skim-milk differs from ordinary milk in containing a less quantity of fatty matter, a portion of this having been removed with the cream; it still, however, contains nearly all the cheese, the sugar of milk, some butter, and the salts of milk; it is therefore scarcely less nutritious than new milk, but in consequence of the diminished amount of fatty matter is less adapted to the development of fat and to the