128 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. 



about a hundred and thirty thousand are upon farms, and 

 twenty thousand kept by owners in towns and cities. But the 

 population of the State has doubled in thirty years ; so that, 

 while there was then one cow to every six persons, there is 

 now only one to every twelve. There has been slight change 

 in the quantity of butter made year after year in the whole 

 State ; but cheese-making has very rapidly diminished, and 

 the production of milk for sale as rapidly increased. 



(The United States Census of 1870, and the State Census 

 of 1875, form the basis of the computations here made. 

 There is little else to rely upon ; but these are very unsat- 

 isfactory, and especially so the dairy returns in the State 

 Census. There is no particular reason to doubt the accu- 

 racy of the figures for population ; and probably the number 

 of cows given is about right ; yet I have found a mistake 

 of a thousand cows in a single town, and this carried through 

 all the footings. The returns of the grain, vegetable, and 

 fruit crops, should be substantially accurate : so ought to 

 be those of the quantity of butter and cheese made ; but 

 in one town two large cheese-factories were entered twice, 

 making an error in one place of over three hundred thousand 

 pounds of cheese. As to the milk product, the figures are 

 quite unreliable : some, evidently, have returned the whole 

 yield of milk ; others, that used for food, and sold ; others, 

 only that sold. It is impossible to enumerate here the in- 

 excusable discrepancies which occur under this head. The 

 claim of the volume, that the milk product reported repre- 

 sents the total yield in the State, is simply absurd ; that 

 would make the average product eleven hundred and thirty- 

 two quarts a year for each cow. At that rate, it would 

 require the whole milk of more than half the cows in the 

 State to make the butter stated, and the rest would not 

 supply milk enough for our cities alone. Let us hope for 

 better work on the next census. The only course now is to 

 verify the number of cows given in the census by the asses 

 sors' returns, and then, from observation and inquiry, esti- 

 mate their annual products.) 



At the present time, the cows in Massachusetts appear to 

 yield about sixteen hundred quarts of milk a year, equiva- 

 lent to a hundred and thirty-three pounds of butter to each. 

 This average is far from what it might be ; but it is a better 



