DAIRY Farming. 5^7 



With the existing tastes and customs of our p'ople and tl»e people 

 of other countries, we find a great and gaining demand for the num- 

 ufactured products of milk, and especially for butter. Viewing 

 butter solely as an article for sustaining life, its value, compared to 

 the milk from which it is made, is exceedingly small, but viewing 

 it in its financial aspect it is the ver\' concentration of milk. At 

 long distances from market whole milk may have a commercial 

 value scared}' above the rank, spontaneous vegetation from which 

 it is produced, for it is as natural a product as grass itself. Milk 

 can be carried but a comparativel}' short distance before its original 

 value will be consumed by the cost of transportation ; but in the 

 form of butter or cheese it may find its wa}' half round the woild 

 and then be sold at a profit on the cost of its production. It is but 

 a few j'ears since we might have heard some of ihe most prominent 

 lecturers on dairy topics telling their hearers that the dairy belt of 

 the United States was comparatively both short and narrow. Jt 

 did not extend veiy far in either direction from central New York, 

 eastward a little waj' into New England, parliculai'ly Vermont, 

 southward into northern Pennsylvania, extending west into Ohio 

 and a little wa}' into Canada. Within this circle was to be found 

 the sweet perennial grasses, the pure spring water and, except for 

 a short period in mid-summer, the cool clear air, and also the le- 

 fined tastes and high degree of intelligence required for the success- 

 ful prosecution of this most dithcult of all the agricultural arts. 

 But things have changed. Those who flattered themselves that they 

 held the monopoh' of butter and cheese making, soon learned 

 that even at the West, where the water is supposed to be too 

 hard or too muddy for either man or beast, and where the grasses 

 grow too rank to be sweet, the 3'oung men who learned how to make 

 good butter here have also learned after going West how to make 

 good butter there. The farmers of some of the Western States 

 have learned that good corn stalks, either green or dry, with plenty 

 of sweet corn meal to go with them will make butter that will bring 

 the highest prices in summer or in winter, and even in the South- 

 ern States the people are some of them finding that with suitable 

 appliances dairying can be carried on successfulh' even under their 

 hot suns. The result has been a general waking up of the dairy 

 interest all through the countr}'. Consumers have fouud that bad 

 butter is not a necessity ; that good butter can be made in sections 

 where inferior goods were formerly the rule, and they will no longer 



