10 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. 



The first regular exercise on the programme was a 

 LECTURE ON MILK, 



BY PROF. L. B. ARNOLD, SECRETARY AMERICAN DAIRYMEN'S ASSOCIATION. 



Milk and its products have lately become prominent, not 

 only as themes of study and investigation, but as sources of 

 individual profit and as the basis of large commercial trans- 

 actions. 



Formerly, the production of milk, as a means of revenue 

 to the farmer, was held to be of trifling account as compared 

 with the raising of stock, or wool, or with the products of the 

 field. But now it has become one of the leading branches of 

 the farm in the Eastern and Middle States, and is rapidly 

 rising to an equal position in the great West.** Why has so 

 much importance been, of late, attached to the dairy interest? 

 Why has it risen from comparative obscurity and taken a 

 place among the leading agricultural pursuits? Why has it, 

 to-day, been assigned a distinct place and equal share in the 

 time and attention of this Board of Agriculture? It is not 

 because milk, relative^, forms any greater proportion of the 

 agricultural products of the country than it formerly did. 

 The number of cows and the number of inhabitants in the 

 country sustain now the same relation to each other that they 

 have done for many years. The number of cows has some- 

 times gained a little upon the population, and then it has 

 fallen off again. Recently, it has gained a little in the State 

 of New York, but this is hardly true of many other States. 

 In the West, the increase of population runs ahead of the 

 increase of cows, and, taking the country as a whole, neither 

 the quantity of milk, nor the aggregate of products manufac- 

 tured from it, has made any essential variation, per capita, 

 from the earliest settlement of the country clown to the pres- 

 ent time. The whole number of cows, as the various census 

 reports show, has been continually about thirty per cent, of 

 the number of inhabitants. 



In the United States^in 1850, it was 27 per cent, of the whole population, 

 in 1860, " 30 

 in 1870, " 29 



