234 RURAL CALIFORNIA 



balancing imports at another. The production of 

 cheese more speedily reached the local limit, for in 

 1866 more cheese was made than locally needed. 

 These attainments were reached by evolution under 

 purely local environment. In 1878 there was but 

 one cow-milking barn in the State and that not a very 

 large one; there was but one silo, and that a rough- 

 board inclosure of a tank-frame which poisoned some 

 horses with rotten silage; there was not a cream- 

 separator, all cream being slapped from a pan with 

 a stick; there was not a modern creamery, although 

 some ranch dairy-houses were creditable in their way ; 

 there was not a refrigerating outfit, though the 

 mountain valleys had some natural ice-houses; there 

 was not a power-churn in the modern sense, though a 

 few bulls were hauling around sweeps ; the only dairy 

 engine was such a bull ; there was no cream-ripening 

 outfit; there was no enduring dairy association 

 although joint action had been occasionally secured; 

 no dairy instruction, no dairy exchange; there were 

 good dairy breeds but no definite breeding nor agree- 

 ment on points to be attained, nor exact measures of 

 what constituted excellence; there were only a few 

 alfalfa pastures along the Sacramento Eiver and their 

 product was condemned; the sorghums were a curi- 

 osity ; the interior valleys were practically conceded to 

 be unfit for dairying and the dairy hope of the State 

 was grounded in the coast and mountain fringes. 

 Such, in the rough, was the dairy interest of Cali- 

 fornia about forty years ago; and yet there were 

 groups of good dairymen who struggled against all 

 these handicaps and produced clean delicious butter 



