THE DAIRY. 239 



Your committee do not expect again to luxuriate upon bread 

 and butter equal to that which we remember in our boyliood, 

 when our api)etites were sharpened by the process of adding 

 daily to our stature ; but that there are, even in these degene- 

 rate days, good dairies and successful dairy women is fully 

 proved by the exhibition here, year after year, of butter that, 

 well spread, would cover a multitude of the sins of bread 

 makers, and cheese that would tempt the sluggish appetites of 

 even the best fed men. To say that none but good articles are 

 found here, would be untrue. Butter that feels in the mouth 

 much like corn meal, that in which the presence of butter-milk 

 is apparent, or that which has acquired an unpleasant flavor 

 from its surroundings, is not creditable to the exhibition ; 

 neither is cheese that is hard or sour, or that which will crum- 

 ble from its own weight. That all these defects have been 

 noticed here in this, or previous years, is within the knowledge 

 of some of your committee. 



In judging of dairy products, the eye must be satisfied as 

 well as the taste. No one would willingly select his butter 

 blindfolded. White butter is usually hard — hard to the touch 

 and hard of sale. Variegated butter is an abomination ; and 

 butter may be so extremely yellow as to be avoided, either 

 because such butter is suggestive of the presence of foreign 

 coloring matter, or of an excess of oily particles and a tend- 

 ency to soften oil the application of a very slight degree of 

 heat. The color of butter depends primarily upon the cow, 

 and secondarily upon the feed. The writer of this has been 

 the owner of a cow whose butter was altogether too yellow to 

 be desirable for table use, while her cream, mixed with that of 

 four or five ordinary cows, would secure for the whole mass 

 that clear straw color which is recognized by connoisseurs in 

 the article as the perfection of color in butter. Such a cow, 

 while almost invaluable in a large dairy, would not be desirable 

 property for him who keeps but one. 



In no other department of farm labor does success depend 

 so much upon experimental skill and so little upon formulas as 

 in this. Every dairy differs in some respects from all others ; as 

 in location, temperature, purity of the atmosphere, quantity 

 and quality of milk ; and in the same dairy different conditions 

 exist at different times. The dairy woman who reads, in the 



