140 ILLINOIS STATE DAIRYMEN'S ASSOCIATION. 



great deal toward increasing milk sales. A few city people re- 

 fuse to use milk because they think it is more or less a mixture 

 of water with chalk, flour, starch, sugar or calves' or sheep's 

 brains; they have read some sensational yarns about the cow 

 with the iron tail or the various ways in which the countryman 

 increases his milk between the farm and the market, and they 

 will have none of it. They cannot be helped but they should be 

 pitied, for without doubt they are more liable to eat sand in 

 their sugar, copper in their peas, or miscellaneous leaves in their 

 tea, than to suffer from any of the adulterations of milk which I 

 have mentioned. I have been told that a certain house having 

 a large trade in spices actually receives more loads of buckwheat 

 hulls and similar material than of our pure spices, but they sell 

 only a guaranteed article. 



Some persons have such strange ideas of what pure milk 

 should look like that it is impossible to suit them with the genu- 

 ine article, for none is produced which corresponds with their 

 notions. They may insist on having it pure, but more yellow 

 than a Guernsey cow could produce. Such persons are not sat- 

 isfied until they find a milkman who is willing to stretch his con- 

 science enough to think that the addition of a little cheese color 

 is no adulteration and of such small importance that he does not 

 need to think of it when he says his milk is pure. 



I one time knew a lady who said she would not think of 

 changing her milkman because he always brought her the milk 

 from the same cow and he had done it every day for 17 years! 

 She was so happy in her delusion that I could not bear to tell 

 her that cows do not usually give milk that long or that her 

 dealer was supplied by several hundred cows and made a prac- 

 tice of mixing his milk. Another lady insisted that a jar of milk 

 could not be fresh if it showed any cream at the time of delivery, 

 and the only way to satisfy her was to instruct the driver to hold 

 the bottle upside down a few moments before taking it to the 

 door. 



These peculiar cases are exceptional and they account but 

 little for the small consumption of milk; a cause of greater con- 

 sequence is the fear of many persons that milk is a disease car- 



