DAIRY PRODUCTS. 205 



— that a rule should be Imposed upon future contributors. 

 Your chairman does not wish to go to a Dutch penal settle- 

 ment, but must decline to serve again if there is no limit to the 

 saline furore or mania of these exhibitors ; and, moreover, he 

 would humbly suggest that the rule should be rather in inverse 

 than direct ratio to the bulk. In Europe, where no humbug or 

 sham is allowed in articles of food, and a good many other 

 things too, salt is added at table. We might not like this ; still 

 it has the merit of making every one his own seasoner. I know 

 one will say, " If you like less salt, stipulate for it and you will 

 get it." I reply, " So high is the saline standard to the pound, 

 that I have for nine years labored in vain to get it lowered in 

 my favor. Spasmodic effort produced only temporary relief : 

 the disease is chronic." 



It may again be well to know how far coloring matter is 

 legitimate. We personally regard it as " a delusion and a 

 snare," and as much out of place as on the cheek of a fair maid 

 in her June heyday of life. In old butter it may be a debatable 

 point, and on old women from parity of reasoning. Let us 

 have none of the " adulteries of art " in butter, at least. 



We so far disagree with one of our predecessors in his report, 

 when he ascribes the want of good butter to the adherence to 

 old methods ; for, to our way of thinking, the butter of to-day 

 is not so good as the butter of the elder day. Good butter can- 

 not be made without a good conscience. The golden age of 

 butter is gone, and will not return in this age of disloyalty to 

 common sense ; for the conscientious labor it requires is at a 

 discount, and is held disreputable where once it was honorable. 

 We all know that the hands which once would " have driven 

 the team afield" prefer too often to gamble in stocks or trade ; 

 and those which held the churn, to quiddle over equivocal 

 finery, or dilute their sympathies with fictitious woes. Let the 

 epitaph of such be, not those blessed ones to her of old, " She 

 did what she could," but " They did what they wanted to." 



We may be thought to have written a diatribe, but not so ; 

 for we have no spite to gratify. But, as we hold consistency in 

 men (and butter too,) to be the acme of virtue, we ask the sim- 

 ple question, man-fashion. Does any agricultural society fulfil 

 its mission by annual shows of surpassing excellence, unless 

 these noble beeves and herds and firstlings of the flock, fruits. 



