SECRETARY'S REPORT. 249 



him to make cheese to advantage, which rccjuires tlie milk of 

 many cows united. Association is a necessity of their situa- 

 tion, and a fruiliere is a company of more or less, often fifty 

 or sixty, small farmers who take all the milk they have to a 

 conveniently located establishment, where it is made into 

 cheese, and the produce divided pro rata according to tiie 

 quantity of milk brought by each member. 



Long before I had ever seen an establishment of this kind, I 

 had recommended its adoption, in lectures lipon dairy farming, 

 in districts of small farmers, in this country, where it was not 

 practicable to make cheese on account of the small number of 

 cows that could be kept ; and I still think there may be loca- 

 tions where the system might be adopted with advantage. It 

 leads to better modes of manufacture than can generally be 

 applied in a small dairy. The cheese will, therefore, be worth 

 a little more than it ordinarily would. 



There is another feature which distinguishes Burgundy as 

 well as Champagne, and in fact very many other parts of 

 France. It is the social organization of the rural population. 

 We see nothing of the scattered farm-houses, such as strike the 

 eye and add beauty to a New England landscape. There are 

 no isolated cottages or homesteads. The houses are all group- 

 ed in villages. You will see in some places a clump of a dozen, 

 perhaps fifty old, centuries old, houses, as closely huddled 

 together as in the streets of a crowded city, and then not 

 another house, not a shed even, for one, two, three, and often 

 half a dozen miles. These farm-house villages give a peculiar 

 antique look to the country, and carry the mind back to the 

 days we read of in history, when it was dangerous to cherish a 

 feeling of safety, when union was strength against the high- 

 way robber, against strolling bands of marauders, against 

 hordes of barbarians which, by way of diversion from their 

 wild and daring life in the north, would make an invasion upon 

 the territories of their neighbors, especially through this great 

 north-eastern division of France. It is fifteen centuries since 

 an army of the Romans and Gauls or Franks met Attila, and 

 checked and defeated his rough legions. 



I had an opportunity of seeing much of these little villages 

 later in my trip, and to make a note of their advantages and 

 disadvantages in an economical and social point of view. The 



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