292 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. 



always. The point I wish to make, and I hardly need speak of it 

 here, for no doubt all the gentlemen present have realized it as 

 much as I do, is the importance of making good butter. Now, 

 there is always plenty of poor butter, — hundreds of tons of poor 

 butter in the market. If gentlemen go through Boston market, as 

 I do year after year, in pursuit of good butter, not only for my- 

 self, but for my neighbors, — for they have an opinion that I am 

 a pretty good judge of butter, having cultivated this matter of 

 tasting to some extent in horticultural matters, — they would see 

 that the quantity of good butter is very small ; it is amazing 

 how small it is in comparison with the amount of poor butter. 

 I know a dealer who brings into this market hundreds of tons, 

 and perhaps thousands of tons, and the way I manage to get 

 good butter is this. In the autumn I say to these dealers from 

 whom I have had my butter for ten or twelve years, select out 

 of the best butter you bring here, four, five or six tubs, and 

 send me up word. They will be a month perhaps before they 

 get four or five tubs which they want me to look at. Then I 

 go down, and perhaps I won't find a tub of really good butter, 

 or at least butter that I should wish to put on my table. They 

 say they are the best they have, and they have selected them out 

 of tons. They will say : " Look at the quantity of butter we 

 have there, yet there is not a tub of it you would take as a gift 

 to put on your table." Then I say : " Set out the best that 

 comes in the next few weeks ; " and this year I was over two 

 months getting my butter. 



You may say I was very particular. I am particular enough 

 to get good butter, and I did succeed in getting two or three 

 tubs of very good quality. Now, it does seem to me that if the 

 people of Massachusetts, and all over the country, realized how 

 they suffered by this state of things (both sellers and consum- 

 ers), we would speedily get better butter. Look at the differ- 

 ence : here I pay — and I presume others of you do the same 

 during the summer months — eighty cents a pound for my but- 

 ter, and I have paid as high as a dollar a pound. Mr. Sargent's 

 butter sells for a dollar and a quarter a pound, and the butter 

 made by other gentlemen sells from eighty cents to a dollar a 

 pound, while medium butter brings only from twenty to 

 thirty-five cents a pound. What makes this difference ? It is 

 largely due to the management in making up of that butter. 



