86 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. 



whole milk cheese, and one or two instances where they were 

 selling at twelve, and this for an article which was not uniformly 

 of first quality ; some of it was very good indeed, but the product 

 of every dairy I saw lacked uniformity. The best of Herkimer 

 cheese was selling in that county at the same time at eight cents, 

 and such as is usually brought from New York to Maine by traders 

 brought only six to seven cents, and yet at those prices the farmers 

 there find it the most profitable pursuit in which they can engage. 

 Until our own home demand is supplied by home manufacture, the 

 price here will continue to be higher than in Vermont and New 

 York by so much as the necessary freights, commissions and profits 

 enhance it. The prices which dairy products command vary, it is 

 true, from time to time, but are yet more uniform than those of 

 most other agricultural products. Should the production here 

 ever exceed the home demand, and the quality prove satisfactory, 

 we have at least one port in this State, from which it may be ex- 

 ported directly to England and to the West Indies, or elsewhere, 

 as easily and as well as from New York pr any other port. 



The nutritive value of cheese as an article of daily food is such 

 that it might be advantageously consumed to a much larger extent 

 than it is at present ; and if a good article could easily be obtained, I 

 presume it would be. There is an old saying that cheese is the 

 poor man's food and the rich man's luxury. Casein is exceedingly 

 nutritive in the proper sense of the word ; i. e. it goes far to repair 

 the waste of the system. No one who has tried it doubts the 

 efiicacy of bread and cheese to sustain strength under hard labor 

 and to keep ofi" hunger. Prof. Johjiston tells us that one pound 

 of cheese is equal in nutritive power to two pounds of flesh. 

 Whether this be the exact proportion which they bear to each 

 other or not, I deem it an indisputable fact that in the form of milk 

 or of cheese, a given amount of herbage will produce more human 

 food than in any other way. 



What constitutes a good cheese? Is there any standard of 

 quahty ? The tastes of people difier very much ; one would have 

 it new, mild, soft, &c. ; another old, strong, hard, or perhaps 

 mouldy, and so on. One may even prefer a cheese made of skim- 

 med miik, got up in true white oak style, as a sailor just in from a 

 voyage, and strolling through Fancuil Rail market, once decided 

 that long green cucumbers were more palatable than the delicious 

 peaches and melons alongside, and seemed hugely to enjoy eating 



