216 ANNUAL, REPORT OF THE 0£E. Doc, 



services could be had bj any one in the community at a small con- 

 sideration. I do not advocate that all dairymen own Babcock ap- 

 paratus. Some farmers are not fitted to run it properly. A Babcock 

 incorrectly run is worse than none at all, since the results are more 

 misleading than instructive. If the test apparatus and some man 

 or woman who is careful and capable of running it are available, 

 one may know, if he wishes to, whether his creamery is doing him 

 iustice or not. 



If the community is unwilling to combine in this way, its dairy-, 

 ruen may turn to the experiment station, an institution which is 

 helpful to hundreds of dairymen in the State in this very way. It 

 is a common thing up our w^ay for Smith, who doubts whether 

 Brown's test is correctly or honestly made, to take a sample and ex 

 press it to the experiment station; and then if its test differs from 

 Brown's there is music in the air. 



You will ask, perhaps, how the station knows that the sample that 

 Smith sends has not been tampered with. If Smith is a rogue, if 

 for any reason he is bound to make his creamery wrong, whether 

 or no, it is easy for him to manipulate the sample. So can Brown 

 tamper with samples. Yet if the men are sincere and anxious to 

 know the truth, there are ways in which they can insure accuracy. 

 Seme little time ago the Vermont station put out a four page bulle- 

 tin — reprinted at the end of this article — giving methods of sampline 

 milk and cream. This has been printed in poster form and was seni 

 in the spring of 1900 to every Vermont creamery and cheese factory 

 with the request that it be posted near the weigh can. We give 

 three schemes for sampling milk or cream whereby the patron who 

 desires to check the testing w^ork of the creamery may do so; first, 

 the creamery sample may be halved, second, the creamery man may 

 be required to take duplicate samples, and, third a patron may take 

 his sample for himself. Neither of these methods of sampling 

 will ensure absolute accuracy. Errors of omission or commission, 

 of ignorance or intent, may be made. If the creamery samples be 

 halved, if Brown is asked to furnish half of it that it may be sent 

 to the station, it is located, prior to halving, in the control of one of 

 the interested parties, the creamery man; and if he is inclined he 

 may tamper with the sample instead of with the result. If the 

 second method is used, if every time Brown's operative puts a gill if 

 milk or a measure of cream into his sam])le jar he puts one into the 

 jar which the patron holds, the objection may be urged that the 

 sample is in the hands of the other interested party, the patron. If 

 the dairyman takes his own sample at home, he may be ill informed 

 as to the necessary precautions in sampling, or carcless, or, indeed, 

 intentionally deceitful, and the sami)le be not truly representative. 

 In short there is no way in which the experiment station can be cer- 



