68 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. 



If that had been clone, if the courts of New York had fixed 

 that as the test of the purity of milk, we could have said good- 

 by to the cheese-factory system, because no man would have 

 risked his reputation resting upon something less than a hair. 

 He would have been at the mercy of any man who dropped a 

 lactometer into his milk. The factory men did not see it, and 

 I have spent forty days in attendance upon the courts of iVew 

 York to defeat it ; not because I have any sympathy with the 

 milk-and-water men, — God forbid ! — but because I feared it 

 would be established l)y the supreme court of the State of 

 New York, that the weight of milk determined its value ; and 

 I was charged by Judge Mason with being the means by which 

 rogues escaped punishment. But I did not mean to be. 



Now, I will speak a little farther of the specific gravity of 

 milk. I expected to have had some cream-gauges and per 

 cent, glasses, by which I might have shown those of you who 

 are in the habit of testing milk, how a careful man, at the 

 head of a cheese or butter tactory, detects the dilution of milk 

 by water. By a little stretch of the imagination, you can 

 suppose this tin tube, a hollow glass tube, capable of contain- 

 ing just one pint of milk, say up to there. The space of half 

 its length down, is divided into fifty equal parts. Now, we 

 want two of these, and a per cent, glass, and this stands at 

 the door of the cheese-factory, or by the side of every man's 

 mess of milk, as a fiiithful sentinel. If that indicates that 

 the milk is lighter than it ought to be, there is something sup- 

 posed to be wrong. If a man puts water into his milk that 

 has any fish in it, we do not need this instrument to create 

 suspicion that the milk has been watered. We have had four 

 cases right around us in Herkimer wliere a fish has got into 

 milk, and that is very strong presumptive evidence that water 

 went with it ! I know, from visiting the beautiful trout-breed- 

 ing establishment here, that if a man wanted to pla}^ the 

 rogue, and wanted to watch all around, look "this Avay and 

 that way," as Moses did when he slew the Egyptian, — and dip 

 lip a pail of water at the same time, if he dipped it out of that 

 trout brook, he would be very likely to dip up a fish. He 

 would be looking to see if anybody else was looking, and 

 would pour the water into the can without noticing the fish. 

 That is just the Avay the fish get in. One boy in Herkimer 



