1891.] PUBLIC DOCUMENT — No. 4. 325 



there any good reason why we should not make them here? 

 And is there any good reason why this Board should not 

 send abroad for men or women who understand how to make 

 these varieties, to teach the process in the dairy sections of 

 the State? The $600 could well be expended in the Barre 

 society and in Franklin and Berkshire, in work of this kind. 



Cooking Schools. 



Again, take the Worcester Northwest Society, which I 

 represent. Here, practical demonstrations could be given 

 in farm cookery ; and, as the society is made up of mechan- 

 ics and farmers, it would be a benefit to both classes. What 

 a splendid thing it would be to establish for a while in the 

 town of Athol, the centre of the district, a cooking-school 

 that slrould inculcate better methods in the culinary art. If 

 any one here wants to know how that art has degenerated, 

 let him stop at some of the country hotels whose cooks are 

 recruited from the neighborhood. The same sort of work 

 could be carried on for a time in the Fitchburg and Taunton 

 societies, and so on from county to county. In such work 

 we should be directly benefiting and interesting the women 

 of the farms ; and who need to be encouraged more ? 



"Balanced Rations" for Table and Stable. 



What we need throughout New England is a class of men 

 like Professor Atwater of Washington, and Mr. Edward 

 Atkinson of Boston, who shall go about teaching the chem- 

 istry of table foods, and the relations of different food sub- 

 stances to each other. Our agricultural papers are full of 

 " balanced rations " for the cow, the pig and the horse. We 

 know almost to a nicety how to feed for milk, for butter, or 

 for muscle and fat. We are studying the relations of pro- 

 tein to carbo-h} r drates, in our rations for the stable ; but are 

 we studying them with reference to the food which we place 

 upon our tables ? We are thinking more about the diet of 

 the calf than of the child, more about the food of the cow 

 than of the mother and daughter. Heaven grant that we 

 may not become so sordid that we shall see only the dumb 

 animals on our farms, and forget the human beings. 



