112 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. 



cents ; * and some has been sold even higher still. The necessary- 

 cost of manufacture is less than two cents per pound, and, with 

 the best of facilities, but little exceeds one cent; thus leaving the 

 dairyman from ten to fourteen cents for the same food which has 

 brought to our stock farmers only four or five cents ; and even 

 allowing that the price of cheese should fall to former rates, the 

 gain would still be very considerable. 



An inquiry naturally arises here, if the farmers of Maine become 

 dairymen who will buy all the cheese ? To which it may be re- 

 plied that they will not all do so ; for the profitable production of 

 milk demands good pastures abounding in springs of pure water, 

 and yielding a pretty steady su]fiply of grass, together with facil- 

 ities for making good the very possible deficiences caused by 

 droughts, by means of a supply of other succulent food. It is not 

 all the land upon which sheep and cattle can be reared, nor where 

 corn and wheat are plentifully produced which can be judiciously 

 devoted to the dairy. There is a good deal of land in Maine which 

 will do better for sheep and for other uses than for the production 

 of milk, and there are immense districts throughout the United 

 States, particularly in the South and West, where dairying will 

 never prevail to any extent, for the simple reason that farmers 

 there can buy butter and cheese to better advantage than to make 

 it. At the same time we have hundreds of thousands of acres of 

 land in Maine where good milk can be produced as cheaply, con- 

 sidering the price of land and labor, as it can in Vermont, New 

 York, or anywhere else. 



Next, what and where is the market for cheese ? First, some 

 can be disposed of at home, in place of the two millions of pounds 

 or thereabouts which has been annually brought into the State for 

 years past, and thus a leak of two hundred thousand dollars, more 

 or less, be stopped. This is an item worth considering, but it is 

 not all. Cheese is exported to the West Indies, to South Amer- 

 ica, to California, and to other places. Formerly a large quantity 

 went to the Southern States. Let us hope that before long we 

 may send thither a great deal more than ever before. When in 

 the Western Reserve last August, I was informed by a large 

 dealer that the call for cheese from Cincinnati, Louisville, and 



* At this present writing, (first week in November,) I notice quotations of factory 

 cheese, in New York, 14^ to 16 cents. 



