I06 THIRTY-FOURTH ANNUAL REPORT OF THE 



THURSDAY A. M., JANUARY 7, 1904. 



President Bruce called the meeting to order at ten o'clock, ana saidi 

 I have the honor now to introduce to you a representative from the 

 dairy department at Washington, a man who is quite well known 

 throughout the State because of his connection with the New England 

 Farmer. I remember him as being at this State meeting several years 

 ago with a paper, and he is a man that will be a help to us now and 

 continually, a man that we will be glad to listen to; that man is George 

 M. Whitaker of Boston, whom I now introduce. 



Mr. Whitaker. — Mr. President, ladies and gentlemen: I see I am 

 next on the program to speak something of the work of the National 

 Dairy Department in connection with the Department of Agriculture. 

 To understand the field of work of this department you must under- 

 stand we live under a dual government; we have our State government 

 with its requirements, and also the national government. Years ago we 

 had in this country thirteen independent nationalities, so to speak, each 

 State as independent as England, Russia, Germany and Italy; then 

 the States got together, and each State gave up certain rights to the 

 national government. In that way a central or federal government was 

 organized, which has the execution of those functions delegated to it 

 by the States then independent. 



Now all the different States of the Union have a State Dairy De- 

 partment, both for educational work and for police work. Dairying is 

 so important that a great deal of attention and study is given to dairy- 

 ing in these different State departments, and the wonderful advance of 

 dairying is largely due to the work done by experiments and study in 

 these dairy departments. I do not think we always realize at what a 

 wonderful pace education has been going on during the past few 

 years. 



I was looking over some of our agricultural reports in our State 

 not long ago and I found that in 1863 the Board of Agriculture in 

 Massachusetts considered the expediency of heating the feed for stock, 

 cooking the corn meal and steaming the hay, and a great many 

 practical farmers got up in that meeting and said they had found in 

 their personal experience they got more milk and more butter, and 

 they wondered why. A certain scientific man got up and told them that 

 reason of that was the secretion of saliva put upon the animals a great 

 physical labor, and if they could feed soft food it would save the drain- 

 age caused by the secretion of saliva; if they saved the animal the 

 strength lost by the secretion of saliva, plainly the animal was in better 

 condition to do good work. What do you thing of that? 



