No. 4.] DAIRYING IN FRANCE. 125 



About 11 o'clock the buying begins. In the market 

 place, or on the village common, buyers have arranged 

 receiving enclosures or booths, with provisions for weighing 

 and for paying. These buyers represent Parisian or other 

 merchants, or the large factories at which butter is manipu- 

 lated and further prepared for market. The country women 

 gather around the square with baskets on the ground. As a 

 buyer approaehes the package is uncovered, the top of the 

 motte exposed, and the buyer, with a peculiar knife or little 

 tryer, examines the butter and makes an offer for it, at the 

 same time placing marks on the surface of the butter, indi- 

 cating, in charaeters secret to his house, the grade of the 

 article and price offered. If the owner rejects the offer, 

 these marks are obliterated, the top of the butter smoothed 

 and another buyer awaited. If accepted, the basket is at once 

 taken to the proper stall, the motte removed, unwrapped, 

 weighed, and reported to the book-keeper and cashier at 

 hand. The butter is weighed on a peculiar platform coun- 

 ter scale or by steel-yards, and unprotected, exposed to sun 

 and storm, dust or rain. The weigher picks up the lump 

 of butter in his hands and sends it sailing through the air 

 to an attendant at a very large, linen-lined basket, ready to 

 receive butter of the special grade to which this is assigned. 

 The owner is paid cash at once, and retires, with empty 

 basket and plethoric purse, to gossip, or " shop," or return 

 to the farm. 



This butter buying at local country markets in France is 

 done with remarkable rapidity. Of course the buyers know 

 well the various makers and the usual quality of their butter ; 

 but every lot is tested, and a decision as to grade and price 

 must be stated and marked. At a market which I witnessed 

 at Carentan, held on an August day in the shadow of the 

 fine old church of the fourteenth century which this little 

 town possesses, there were 20 buyers, representing 4 pur- 

 chasing firms or factories. In most cases the butter was 

 examined by only one person, the sale being virtually fixed 

 in advance, but very many mottes were tested three or four 

 times. The number of makers represented and the total 

 number of mottes could not be determined, arriving sellers 



