INTRODUCTION 



BY THE ENGLISH EDITORS. 



It is generally allowed by those who have given attention to the 

 progress of agriculture during the past thirty years, that perhaps the 

 most prominent feature in its history has been the great change 

 that has taken place in that time, in the methods and processes of 

 dairying, and in the relative importance assigned among English- 

 speaking peoples to dairying as a branch of agricultural science and 

 practice. This is very clearly evidenced in all works on agricultural 

 science and practice written prior to the present decade, in which 

 it will generally be found that, while some pages are devoted to 

 a description of dairy breeds of cattle, very little space is accorded 

 to the consideration of questions relating to the management and 

 treatment of milk, and the manufacture of butter and cheese. 



The comparative neglect of dairying science, up to the present 

 time, is probably attributable to two causes. In the first place, 

 other branches of agriculture contributed in a much larger degree 

 then than now to the revenue of agriculture; and in the second, 

 dairying as an art was imperfect and empirical, and as a science had 

 little or no existence. Up to the time when the import of foreign 

 wheat to Britain began to assume large dimensions, the income and 

 profits of our farmers depended in very great measure on the returns 

 from wheat and other cereal grains. In the year 1869, for example, 

 the total area under wheat in the United Kingdom was 3,862,202 

 acres, which was estimated 1 to yield 113,331,777 bushels of an 

 average value of 6s. OJd per bushel. The total value of wheat 

 (grain only) to the agriculture of the United Kingdom in 1869 was, 

 therefore, more than 34,000,000 sterling. As the value of wheat, 

 however, from that year underwent a steady decline owing to a con- 

 stant increase in the foreign supply, the cultivation of this cereal 

 was gradually abandoned by farmers as the returns became unpro- 



1 K. F. Crawford, in Journal of the Royal Agricultural Society, 1895. 



xv 



