CO-OPEEATIVE DAIRY SOCIETIES 35 



were imported from Holland ; a hundred years later Denmark 

 still had a net import of butter, and even far into the nineteenth 

 century peasants made only enough for their own use, except 

 sometimes during the flush of milk in the early summer-time. 

 In the thirties and forties of last century dairying on a larger 

 scale was introduced by farmers from Holstein, who bought 

 Danish estates or took them on lease, and better methods of 

 dairy work spread to other estates and to a few of the largest 

 peasant farms, often through the instrmnentalit^^ofd^^ 

 maids from Holstein. From the middle of the century efforts 

 were" made to improve the butter- making on peasant farms. 

 In 1860 the Royal Agricultural Society of Denmark appointed 

 a young man with a university training to study and to teach 

 more rational methods in dairy work. This gentleman, who 

 became subsequently the professor of Dairy Science at the Royal 

 Agricultural College in Copenhagen, was Th. R. Segelcke. By 

 exhibitions, demonstrations, lectures, by having young men and 

 young women taught at the best dairies, and by similar means, 

 butter making was improved in the estate dairies and also 

 gradually in the homes of the peasants. But it was a great 

 objection to the peasant butter that it came in so small quan- 

 tities that, were it ever so good, it was useless for export by 

 itself, and most often the quality was far from good. It was 

 delivered to the local dealer, who gave groceries in exchange, 

 or it was sold to butter merchants, who graded, milled and 

 exported it. Even the finest peasant butter was therefore of 

 less value than estate butter because it was not marketable ; 

 it had to be worked before it could be sold for export. At the 

 butter exhibition held in connection with the International 

 Agricultural Exhibition in London, in 1879, in a class for salt 

 butter, the second prize was awarded to a sample of butter 

 produced by a Danish peasant whose whole herd consisted of 

 six cows — and still he could not obtain at home for his butter 

 the price which was paid for the larger productions of inferior 

 quality from estate dairies. 



The invention of a mechanical cream separator — the first 

 separator with continuous working was constructed by L. C. 

 Nielsen, and was at work in Copenhagen in 1878, the next 

 year brought Dr. de Laval's Swedish separator — altered the 



