144 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. 



have such reputation for a uniform article as to have it ac- 

 cepted week after week, and priced without examination. 

 But it is a very common thing for a car-load of creamery 

 butter from the Far West to be unloaded and placed in store 

 without opening more than half a dozen tubs in the lot. 

 You can readily see what a great advantage this is to the 

 receiver and to all merchants who handle it. I was present 

 last August when an order was filled for six thousand pounds 

 of butter, and but a single package was opened to test the 

 quality. It was all from one well-known creamery in Iowa ; 

 and the buyer was confident that the quality was uniform 

 throughout. No such transaction would be possible in dairy 

 butter. It would be difficult to find so large a quantity 

 without there being half a dozen different grades, and the 

 buyer would certainly not feel safe until every parcel in the 

 whole lot had been sampled, no matter where it came from. 

 I may add that the butter I have alluded to was purchased 

 to be sent to the south of Africa, and was made at the Dia- 

 mond Creamery of H. D. Sherman & Co. in Iowa, which 

 took the general sweepstake prize at the International Dairy 

 Fair at New York a year ago. The sale was made at more 

 than double the ruling price, at the time, for Western Mas- 

 sachusetts butter. The enterprising Boston agents of this 

 famous creamery have placed a fine exhibit of its butter in 

 the hall below. 



Every butter-maker present knows what a difference there 

 is in the home product at different times. Sometimes my 

 best butter cows are dry, and sometimes at their best ; now 

 the feed is first-rate, and again it is poor; this week I'm 

 feeling well, and take special pains with the work ; last week 

 I was half sick, very busy, and very careless ; sometimes the 

 butter "won't come," and when it does it is so soft! Is it 

 any wonder that the butter from the same dairy differs in its 

 appearance, its consistency, and its whole quality, week after 

 week? With such varying circumstances upon a single 

 farm, with eight or ten cows, just think of the variations 

 upon a hundred separate farms. How is it possible, when 

 such a difference exists in the stock and the owners of it, in 

 the pastures and the water, the management and the mak- 

 ing, for the butter from the hundred farms to have any 

 uniformity? It isn't possible, and that's just what's the 

 matter. 



