CARE AND NEATNESS. 357 



enormous quantities of disgusting, streaky, and tallow- 

 like butter that are daily thrust upon the seaboard 

 markets must be due to the carelessness and negligence 

 of heedless men, to exposure to sun and rain, to bad 

 packing, and to delays in transportation. Many of these 

 evils you may not be able to remove, since you cannot 

 follow the article to the market, and see that it arrives 

 safely and untainted. But you can take greater pains, 

 perhaps, in some of the preliminary processes of 

 making, and produce an article that will not be so liable 

 to injure from keeping and transportation ; and then, if 

 fault is to be found, it does not rest with you. 



I will not suggest the possibility that your ideas of 

 cleanliness and neatness may be at fault ; and that what 

 may seem an excess of nicety and scrubbing to you 

 may appear to be almost slovenliness to some others, 

 whose butter receives the highest price in the market, 

 and always finds the readiest sale. Permit me, however, 

 to refer you to pages 300, 324, and 325, where a detailed 

 account is given of the washings in water and washings 

 in alkali ; of the scrubbings, and the scourings, and the 

 scaldings, arid the rinsings, which the neat and tidy 

 Dutch dairy-women give all the utensils of the dairy, 

 from the pails to the firkins and the casks, and also to 

 their extreme carefulness that no infectious odor rises 

 from the surroundings. I think you will see that it is 

 a physical impossibility that any taint can affect the at- 

 mosphere or the utensils of such a dairy, and that many 

 of the details of their practice may be worthy of imita- 

 tion in our American dairies. 



And here allow me to suggest that, though we may 

 not approve of the general management in any partic- 

 ular section, or any particular dairy, it is rare that there 

 is not something in the practice of that section that is 

 really valuable and worthy of imitation. 



