THE QUALITY OF BUTTER. 293 



Now, is it not possible for people to make universally a better 

 article than is now made ? 



Mr. Ellsworth tells us that certain conditions, properly ob- 

 served, will give good butter, with now and then an exception. 

 If certain rules may be laid down for making good butter, pray 

 tell me why our people are making a poor article of butter al- 

 most universally, when a good article might be made ? I do not 

 find fault with the butter makers any more than I do other peo- 

 ple, but the butter makers are blind more than other classes of 

 farmers to their own interests, more than any other set of men. 

 If they would make a better article of butter, it would find a 

 more ready sale, and a much larger price would be paid for it 

 than is paid at the present time. 



Another thing is the shape in which it is sent to market. A 

 great deal depends upon the way in which fruit, or butter, or any 

 thing of that sort, is sent to market. If it is sent in good condi- 

 tion, done up in good shape, the farmer realizes more for it ; 

 three or five, or, perhaps, ten cents more a pound on butter, than 

 he would if it was prepared in an indifferent manner for market. 



The way our Barre friends send it, I believe, is in a box con- 

 taining eight to twelve pounds, and I have once in a while 

 bought it in that way. But if it is sent in lumps, it should be 

 put up in an attractive way. People will pay a little more for 

 a handsome lump of butter to put upon the table, than they 

 will if it comes in a box, unless it is made into lumps at home, 

 which is sometimes done. 



The principal point I make, and which I wish to impress upon 

 every body who makes butter, is to make better butter. If it is 

 true that they have not good stock to make butter from, then 

 they had better turn their attention to improving their stock. 

 I sometimes think I should like to take the butter makers of 

 New England and New York, and other places, who send their but- 

 ter to the Boston market, and make them taste the butter they 

 would find in the stores herej they would go back home deter- 

 mined to make better butter in future. 



The best butter, it is said, comes from- Vermont. I do not 

 find it so. I find the best winter butter comes from New York 

 State, and some of the best butter in summer comes from about 

 Boston. To eat some of the butter that is made is worse than 

 taking medicine ; because when you take a dose of nauseating 



