WANT OF UNIFORMITY. 101 



knowledge, and are far less certain of the correctness of their 

 present opinions, than are the average farmers or dairywornen 

 who have learned all they know of butter or cheese making 

 in their own or their mothers' kitchens. 



Those who have studied the philosophy of dairying the 

 most, and under the most favorable circumstances, realize 

 above all others how very little is really and absolutely known 

 that ought to be known about milk, butter, and cheese, and 

 the animals from which they are produced. 



Go into any of our markets to-day, and how long will it 

 take one to find two cheeses or two packages of butter from 

 different dairies that are alike in texture, in color, and in 

 flavor? Go back to the forms, and how soon will you find two 

 dairymen who keep the same kind of cows and give them the 

 same kinds of feed, set the milk in the same kind of pans, 

 skim at the same age, use the same kind of churn and other 

 tools of the dairy- room, churn at the same temperature, salt 

 and work the butter by the same rules and methods, and, in 

 short, do everything from beginning to end that should be 

 done to make a uniform product? 



One of the proprietors of a leading butter firm, doing busi- 

 ness in Boston, recently told me that during the many years 

 in which he had been handling butter, he had never yet 

 received butter from different dairies that was any more nearly 

 alike than were the men who brought it in, or the women who 

 made it. The products of every dairy have a character pecul- 

 iarly their own, which would hardly be the case if we all 

 understood our business, as marble-workers and bricklayers 

 understand theirs. But if these different products were all 

 good, and only varied as the character of different varieties 

 of good fruits vary, there would be less cause for complaint 

 than now, with one-half, or perhaps more, really unpalatable 

 to any but the coarser appetites. Now, what do these facts 

 prove? Simply this, that as dairymen we are yet very igno- 

 rant of the laws under which we are working. The hot horse- 

 shoe may not be used as frequently now as formerly for 

 driving witches from the churn, but how many of us do really 

 know just why the "butter don't come" as well in November 

 as in Juue, or why the milk sours most when lightning and 

 thunder shake the earth? 



