WORK DONE OR PROJECTED 185 



be won over to the idea of having their herds tested by means 

 of tuberculin. Strong prejudices were not unnaturally 

 encountered, and, although two farmers consented, in 

 1906 7, to the test being applied to their cattle, the other 

 farmers in the district expressed disbelief therein, and would 

 not then follow the example set to them. Gradually, 

 however, their objections have been overcome, and to-day 

 practically all the farmers concerned have adopted the test, 

 and show confidence in it, some of them now buying their 

 fresh stock subject to the animals passing the test. 



Such confidence has been fully deserved. The milk from 

 cows certified to have passed the test is marketed, in bottles, 

 as tuberculin-tested milk, is sold in thirty towns in Durham 

 and Yorkshire, and has become a well-recognised standard 

 article. The healthiness of the cattle, too, has materially 

 improved. 



So great is the importance it has attached to this action on 

 the part of the Wensleydale society that the A. O. S. has 

 called the attention of its co-operative dairy societies in 

 general to what has been done. It is felt that there should 

 be an especially good opening for the societies to supply 

 guaranteed milk of the type in question to the sanatoria to 

 be set up under the National Insurance Act, while there is 

 no doubt that the consumption of milk as a beverage would 

 be greatly increased in the towns if a guarantee of absolute 

 purity could be offered to would-be consumers. There are 

 already great possibilities of a further increase in the con- 

 sumption of milk ; but with the guarantee here in question 

 those possibilities would be greater still, and, with an 

 improved and a more profitable system of distribution, the 

 position of the British dairy farmer would be far more 

 satisfactory in the future than it has been in the past. 



Thus the general situation of the British dairying trade has 

 materially changed since the late Mr. Hanbury interested 

 himself in this and other phases of agricultural production 

 in 1903 ; but the improvement effected has been mainly 

 due to the co-operation which at that time appeared so 

 difficult of attainment. 



