156 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. 



it to Boston market, and I make from seventy-five to a 

 hundred pounds of butter a day. This cream is of most deli- 

 cious flavor ; but all the globules are more or less broken. 

 This cream sours very quickly. It will not keep unless we 

 bottle it up immediately, and plunge it into ice and keep it 

 at a temperature of forty degrees until it is thoroughly cold ; 

 but, when we churn the cream, we find we can drop it down 

 to fifty degrees, and we can churn it in about half the time 

 we could the cream I used to get from my deep pails. That 

 is a great advantage. We used to churn our cream at a 

 temperature of from fifty to sixty degrees in the summer. 

 This summer we churned at from fifty to fifty-two degrees 

 by the thermometer. 



Let me say here, that I think the thermometer is the dairy- 

 man's best friend. I do not know of any thing so important 

 in the manufacture of good butter as to get your cream at 

 that temperature which brings your butter just right, just 

 where jou want it ; and, by a little experience and practice, I 

 maintain that a good farmer can do that every time. This 

 cream is certainly broken more or less by the force by which 

 it is thrown off by this machine. Whether it is injurious to 

 the butter or not, I have been six months making up my 

 mind, and am still a little on the fence, although I think I 

 have got one foot over a little on the other side ; but I am 

 still in doubt. Some say that the grain of the butter is 

 injured, and some say it is not, although I have never sub- 

 mitted it to so critical judges as you have had to make your 

 awards upon the exhibition below. 



I am very much in love with tins machine, and I suppose I 

 could go on and talk for an hour. I should be pleased to 

 answer any questions. I hope I have described the machine 

 in such a way that you understand it, and understand the 

 process. 



Mr. West. What is the milk worth after it has been 

 through your machine ? 



Mr. Burnett. That is another point to which I intended 

 to allude. My skim-milk finds a very ready market in 

 Boston ; and Thanksgiving week it brought me from two 

 cents and a half to four cents a quart. But that was in a 

 time of undue excitement : the market was very bare. I 

 wholesale it now for about two cents and a half a quart. 



