102 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. 



How many can tell why cream is sometimes bitter in cold 

 weather, and what the remedy, or whence those little white 

 specks that are sometimes found in butter? These are ques- 

 tions which, with scores of others, are annually coming up for 

 discussion at our dairymen's meetings, and oftener in the 

 kitchen of almost every dairy farmer. One man may answer 

 some of them to his own satisfaction, but some one else will 

 bring forward facts which seem to overthrow all his philos- 

 ophy. 



We disagree in our theories, we disagree in our methods, 

 and of course we disagree in our products, and this disagree- 

 ment is evidence conclusive that as dairymen we are ignorant 

 of our business, that we don't know enough to agree. 



Some of you will remember with what a genuine air of 

 modesty our beloved Agassiz once said in a meeting of this 

 Board, "that everywhere differences — in matters of religion, 

 in matters of politics, in matters of science — arise from our 

 inability to know enough to agree with one another." 



I might take up your time by giving you the details of my 

 own methods in the dairy-room, might tell you what kind of 

 pans I use, how often the milk is skimmed, at what temper- 

 ature the cream is churned, in what kind of a churn, how the 

 butter is worked, how much salt is used, how put up, and how 

 sent to market, and many other of the minor details of butter- 

 making as carried on in my own dairy-room every week in the 

 year, and which seem to me now of the highest importance, 

 although well knowing that others are equally successful while 

 adopting methods almost the exact opposite of mine, and 

 which I may within a year adopt in my own practice, and 

 cherish with the same ardor now felt for my present methods. 



I own up to having once been a little conceited. I thought 

 I knew exactly how some kinds of dairy-work should be 

 doue. I thought that any cream, if brought to the proper 

 temperature, could be churned into butter ; but after taking 

 a job from a neighbor, whom I thought knew less than I, and 

 churning very steadily for nearly two whole days cream 

 which had been churned already (though not to my knowl- 

 edge at the time) more than a week, and then having to give 

 it up, completely exhausted and discouraged, I came to the 

 conclusion that I did not know it all, and that there were 



