140 BRITISH DAIRYING, 



mend milk to their patients; and, though last not least, the 

 Blue Ribbon Army, by their earnest advocacy of non-alcoholic 

 drinks, have helped very materially to increase the consumption 

 of milk. All this is, of course, as it should be, for it is not 

 very pleasant to think of the condition our dairy industry would 

 have been in but for this selfsame milk trade. The enormous 

 consumption of tea, which has no nutritive value, very seriously 

 interferes with that of milk, which has a very high nutritive 

 value : but it is hopeless to expect tea-drinkers to give up 

 entirely their favourite beverage, and take to milk instead. The 

 poor, however, may well be advised to do it, for economy's 

 sake. 



It would be interesting to ascertain how many cows are kept 

 for the milk trade, how many for cheese, how many for butter, 

 and so on. The late John Algernon Clarke, one of the best 

 writers on agriculture which this country has produced, esti- 

 mated that the people of the British Islands consumed an 

 average of one-third of a pint of milk per day ; in this case the 

 people of London alone require the services of more than 

 160,000 cows to provide them with milk, not to mention butter 

 and cheese, for which upwards of 400,000 more cows are 

 required. Much of London's cheese and butter, however, come 

 from foreign countries, whereas the whole of its fresh milk is 

 produced at home. 



Milk Adulteration. 



In a previous chapter (pp. 86, 87) I have given the component 

 parts of milk in units and fractions, and to these my readers 

 may be now referred for purposes of comparison. Milk that 

 is sold to the public is required by the public analysts to have 

 a minimum standard quality as follows : 



Solids, not fat . . . 8*50 



Fat 2-50 



This will leave a permissible . 89-00 of water, 



ICO'OO 



