230 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. [Pub. Doc. 



PAST AND PRESENT DAIRYING. 



BY MK. A. M. LYMAN OB^ MONTAGUE. 



Milk and butter were })rodueed by our people as early as 

 l(i07, from cows brought from the West Indies, descendants 

 from stock brought there by Columbus in his second voyage 

 in 1493, but the dairy industry made slow progress until 

 within the memory of many of us. 



By research we find that at a very remote period the dis- 

 covery was made that goat's milk carried in skins on camels' 

 backs, when making long journeys, was churned into butter. 

 Later the Arabs galloped to make the butter come quicker, 

 thus showing progress from a slow motion to a quick one in 

 butter making. 



In sacred history we find Abraham extending his hos- 

 pitality to the angels by furnishing real l)utter and milk, 

 with cakes that Sara baked. In the songs of Moses he sings 

 of riding in high })laces, that he might eat of the increase 

 of the field, suck honey, and eat butter with milk and wine. 

 Jael, the wife of Ileber, won distinction in her plot of treat- 

 ing Sisera with milk and butter, in a lordly dish, as written 

 in the song of Deborah and Barak. When David was in the 

 wilderness, tired and hungry, they brought, with other 

 things, butter and cheese for his sustenance. 



We have but little information as to how butter was made 

 in those days, but we well remember the methods of forty 

 3'ears ago ; and we may conclude that the improvement from 

 the earliest days of butter making was very gradual indeed. 

 It is true that most of the improvements in dair^dng have 

 come within the past quarter of a century. 



Before the co-operative creamery came into existence, 

 with its machinery, Avooden ])owls were used, and I have 



