142 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. 



Iowa change hands at twenty cents a pound. All this was 

 in bulk, — boxes and tubs, ranging' in weight from eight to 

 sixty pounds. Looking for smaller lots from special dairies, 

 I found few consignments from this part of the State rated 

 as high as twenty cents, and only one higher. From Ver- 

 mont, a good many were placed at twenty and twenty-two 

 cents, and some at thirty cents. Most of these lots were in 

 lumps and prints ; but the thirty-cent butter was in cubical 

 boxes of ten pounds each, — a white, clean, attractive pack- 

 age, which is quite a favorite in the market. Expressing 

 some surprise that this article stood so high, in such form, 

 one of the best judges in "Boston said to me that butter was 

 being graded closer and closer in that market, and selling 

 very generally on its actual merits without regard to the 

 form in which it came. He said the demand for lump and 

 print butter, rather than that cut from tubs, was constantly 

 crrowinsr in the retail trade, and still faster the demand for 



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small boxes and pails, and attractive packages from four to 

 ten pounds' weight. He added, that, if butter was not first- 

 class, -extra work in putting it into prints, &c, sometimes 

 helped its sale ; but, if its quality was right, he didn't care 

 what the form or the package was : he could always sell first- 

 rate butter at good prices in any shape. The time to which 

 I refer was when the prices were as low as they have been 

 for thirty years, yet in the same stalls where I saw many 

 Western Massachusetts boxes marked at twelve cents, there 

 were cases of butter from single dairies — some in this State, 

 some in Vermont — which sold at fifty, sixty, seventy-five, and 

 eighty cents a pound, and of all these, the dealers complained 

 that they could not get enough for their customers. One 

 well-known dealer showed, me a lot of the famous " Darling- 

 ton " butter from Pennsjdvania, which he sold at seventy- 

 five cents the year round. He received a case of it every 

 week ; but his supply was never equal to the calls for it. 



Later in the season, prices advanced ; and, as the weather 

 affected the butter less in transit, the difference between our 

 home product and that from a distance was not so great. 

 Usually in the spring and autumn, Massachusetts butter 

 ranks nearly the same as that from the dairies of New York 

 and Vermont, and in winter time it goes ahead of them : this 

 is attributed by the dealers to the greater amount of grain and 



