INTRODUCTION. Xxiii 



dairying. Neither can it be said, though great improvements have 

 taken place in recent years, that the old condition of things has yet 

 come to an end. A number of dairy schools have now indeed been 

 established, and have done excellent work. Systematic training 

 in the art of butter and cheese making can be obtained without 

 much difficulty in most parts of the country, and something is also 

 beginning to be generally understood of the principles on which 

 these arts should be based. A dairy literature, largely drawn from 

 American, and indirectly from German, sources, but still to a great 

 extent empirical, has begun to be founded; and in the practice of 

 dairying, apart from increased knowledge or skill on the part of the 

 operator, much advantage has been derived from the possession of 

 modern and more suitable utensils. 



But with all the progress that has been made in the past 

 twenty years, it is undeniable that our knowledge alike of dairy 

 practice and of dairy science is still far behind that of many of our 

 continental competitors. This is due in great part to the position 

 of greater importance the dairy industry holds in agricultural coup- 

 tries, such as Denmark and Holland, than in a country like Britain, 

 whose wealth is derived in large measure from minerals and manu- 

 factures. In all the countries, without exception, that contribute 

 materially to swell the imports of dairy produce into Britain, great 

 efforts have been put forth by the respective Governments to 

 develop and to carry to perfection manufactures on which the 

 wealth of these countries is so largely dependent. In Britain, up 

 till a few years ago, it was left wholly to private enterprise to 

 provide technical instruction in dairying, and even now the amount 

 contributed by Government to the assistance of dairy schools and 

 colleges imparting dairying instruction amounts to not more than a 

 few hundreds of pounds for the whole kingdom. In consequence 

 of this, little attention has been paid in Britain to a study of the 

 many important questions on which dairying demands the assistance 

 of the botanist, the chemist, and above all the bacteriologist. In 

 Denmark and Germany there are numerous and important dairy 

 schools and agricultural colleges, largely endowed and supported 

 by Government, in which the whole time of many able men is 

 devoted to dairy teaching, and to the investigation of the many 

 difficult problems that confront alike the practitioner of the dairy 

 art and the student of dairy science. 



Hence it is that till recent years English agricultural literature 



