Report on the Dairy- Farming of the North-west of France. 319 
excellent butter in summer and autumn, Denmark and Sweden 
in winter, and Holland in spring and summer, to an extent 
that similarly influences the price of English goods, and 
similarly affects the receipts of our native dairy- farmers. 
We have taught all the Avorld how to make a cheese that 
will travel with little or no injury, and that can be made of 
such uniform quality that hundreds may be safely bought as 
per sample. Cannot we in our turn learn how to make butter 
and soft cheese of good quality and in large quantities? It 
is to no purpose to state that the butter made by such or 
such an English farmer is as good as any in the world. The 
question is. How much of such butter can be delivered every 
week to market? The best English butter is, no doubt, the 
best in the world ; but, unfortunately for us, it is so scarce that 
it is rarely seen, and is practically out of the wholesale market. 
Shopkeepers, hotel-keepers, and others who supply the public, 
must buy a commodity the quality of which they know will be 
uniform throughout. This cannot at present be expected of 
English, and still less of Irish goods, and therefore purveyors 
purchase foreign — French, Dutch, and Danish — according to its 
season. What Mr. Gilbert Murray states on another page (142) 
is doubtless true of many other large hotels as well as the Mid- 
land ; and although in some shops one may see butter labelled 
" Best Dorset," " Best Aylesbury," &c., the expert knows that 
in many cases these designations are trade fictions, and that 
Normandy is generally the home of the article in question. 
With regard to butter-making, the first step of course is to 
produce a better material than the bulk of English butter now is, 
and the second is to secure uniformity of quality, either by the 
establishment of co-operative butter-factories, or by the inter- 
position of a middle-man like the French butter-merchant. The 
first step is comparatively easy, for it only requires a firm con- 
viction that sour milk causes a mixture of curd with the cream, 
and that for every shilling gained in quantity by skimming 
sour milk, five shillings are lost in the quality of the butter made 
from it. This conviction having been arrived at, milk would 
always be skimmed while still sweet, and thus a minimum of 
curd would be taken off with the cream ; while by thoroughly 
washing the butter in the churn as soon as it comes, all curd 
and butter-milk would be washed out from every particle of 
butter. In the absence of fermentable and putrefying matter, 
there can be no fermentation and no putrefaction. It is the 
very thoroughness with which the French achieve this result 
that causes some people to pronounce their butter tasteless ! 
This result, however, is not obtained by the French farmer in 
the case of the butter which finds its way to the English market ; 
