No. 4.] REPORT OF DAIRY BUREAU. 451 



Educational. 



The educational work of this department has not been 

 neglected during the past year. Six meetings have been 

 addressed by members of the Bureau, and the general agent 

 has been called upon fourteen times for addresses. There 

 have been three calls on him for Babeock test demonstra- 

 tions before audiences; but the test is now so well known 

 that this class of calls is less than formerly. There have 

 been three calls for the use of this test on other occasions. 

 One of these was the awarding the sweepstakes dairy prize 

 of the Worcester South Agricultural Society. The general 

 agent has acted as judge of this class for the society for a 

 number of years. 



Codification of Dairy Laws. 



The dairy laws of this State have been a growth. Almost 

 every year since 1856 there have been amendments and new 

 legislation, and in some instances the practice under these 

 laws has been modified by court decisions. Hence the dairy 

 laws needed codification and revision more perhaps than 

 the laws in any other department. Revision, however, was 

 beyond the scope of the work undertaken by the recent 

 commission and the Legislature of last year but the codifi- 

 cation has resulted in great improvement. 



Owing to the somewhat complicated nature of the case, 

 the work left the codification commission with a few serious 

 errors ; for example, the selling of milk not of standard 

 quality was not prohibited, two standards for skimmed milk 

 were created, and a law relative to duplicate samples (de- 

 clared by the supreme court as repealed by implication) was 

 continued. At the request of the sub-committee of the 

 Legislature having the matter in charge, the general agent 

 of the Bureau met with them several times and gave much 

 attention to this work. As a result of their efforts, all seri- 

 ous defects were remedied, and the codification seemed per- 

 fect. But in the final copying and renumbering of sections 

 a few relatively unimportant errors crept in. The attention 

 of the legislative sub-committee was called to these, but they 



