310 HIGHLAND AND AGRICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



years held the monopoly of the fine Scotch butter trade. 

 This competition has caused many of the dairy farmers of 

 Lanarkshire and Ayrshire to relinquish the making of 

 butter altogether, and to confine their attention to the 

 making of sweet milk cheese, which gives a good return 

 with comparatively little labour ; and just as the sweet 

 milk cheese has increased, the cured butter of the western 

 districts of Scotland has diminished.' The report notices 

 that several imitations of different kinds of English cheese 

 were excellent ; but it adds that ' much yet remains for the 

 Scottish cheese-makers to do to equal their professional 

 rivals in England, w^here the cheese is undoubtedly worth 

 15 per cent, more in the market than Scotch cheese.'* 



* There were few really good cheese makers in Scotland in the first half of 

 the present century. Some Ayrshire families contrived to make good Dunlop 

 cheese sixty years ago, and part of it was sent to respectable households in 

 Edinburgh. It was thus brought into comparison with Gloucester and other 

 approved English varieties, and the attention of influential men was directed 

 to the question as to the practicability of making generally as good cheese in 

 Scotland as in England. As is noted on page 186, a premium of ;^io was in 

 1824 offered by the Highland Society for the best imitation of Double Glou- 

 cester cheese made that year in Scotland, and the prize was won by Mr Bell, 

 Woodhouselee, a farmer near the border of Cumberland. In 1832, the Highland 

 Society placed fifteen sovereigns at the disposal of their members in Wigtown- 

 shire, to encourage improvement in that county. The cheese were to be imitations 

 of Stilton, North Wilts, or Gloucester. Though the cheese-making of Wigtown- 

 shite at that time was inferior to Ayrshire, it does not appear that the prizes did 

 any good beyond keeping the idea of improvement by change of mode before the 

 public mind. In 1844, I\Ir Caird introduced a Lancashire mode into his dairy 

 at Baldoon, in Wigtownshire ; and Mr Caird's dairyman followed up the idea 

 of change by making Cheshire cheese, after going to England to obtain 

 instruction. That dairyman — Robert M 'Adam, an enterprising and ingenious 

 man — and his brother attained considerable success in their imitations of 

 Cheshire cheese. .Some leading members of the Ayrshire Agricultural As- 

 sodation also directed their attention to the matter ; although it did not seem 

 a hopeful attempt to change a rural practice throughout whole counties, in the 

 face of old prejudices and time-honoured associations. But a movement was 

 made. Two members of the association — Mr Cunninghame, Chapelton, and 

 Mr Drennan, Auchinlee — were deputed in 1854 to visit some of the dairy 

 counties of England. The deputation saw Cheddar cheese made in the dairy 

 of the late Mrs Harding, at Marksbury, in .Somerset, and they recommended 

 the Cheddar mode, as it seemed to combine the greatest advantages in ease 

 and simplicity of manufacture with value of results. At that time Cheddar 

 cheese was little known, even by name, in Scotland. 



Acting on the recommendation of the deputation, the Ayrshire Associa- 

 tion brought Mr and Mrs Joseph Harding to Ayrshire in 1855, and they made 



