Farming of Dorsetshire. 
451 
butter a-week to the London market. Dorset butter, well made 
and quickly to hand, stands deservedly high ; but roughly made, 
and badly packed in shaky casks, it is reduced to a level far 
below its value. How far the system of letting dairies which 
generally exists in this county, and which interposes between 
the owner of the cow and the purchaser of the butter, first, the 
dairyman ; next the butter factor ; then the butter salesman ; and 
then the shopkeeper, maintains the character of Dorset butter ; 
or how far it deteriorates it by conflicting the interest of the 
farmer, who has to care only for his cow, and the interest of the 
dairyman, who has to care only for his butter, we do not here 
inquire ; but it is certain that the Dorsetshire dairyman is occa- 
sionally surprised by reading that in London and in the large 
towns butter is 16rf. and \%d. a lb. when he is realising for it only 
9c/. or Idd. The custom of disposing of the make of a dairy for a 
•' season" at a given price deprives the dairyman of the stimulus 
which the fluctuations of the market would have upon him : and 
there is a very prevalent custom in the county Avhich certainly 
does not improve the quality of its butter. Every tub sold to a 
factor after being filled is stript, genei'ally at the cooper's ; the 
butter is turned out into the scale, weighed, and turned in again. 
It is not pretended that the operation improves the contents of 
the cask, nor is any merit claimed for it on the scores of clean- 
liness, convenience, or economy. The only defence offered for 
it is that by this process both parties know the exact weight of 
butter sent to market. It seems strange that between persons 
who bargain to the amount of hundreds of pounds in a year, and 
from whom considerable confidence is demanded in other respects, 
the common commercial rule of allowing for " tare " should not 
be recognised, and the present inconvenient practice cease. The 
custom of exposing manure heaps at the sides of roads, allow- 
ing -their soluble contents to be washed into the adjoining 
gutters, or, worse still, into the neighbouring barton pond, whilst 
the escape of ammonia is facilitated by the occasional turning 
of the heap, may be improved on, where it cannot be avoided, 
by placing a layer of fine earth at top and bottom, and build- 
ing up the heap of alternate layers of earth and dung. There is 
an urgent need of railway accommodation for the greater part of 
this county — a need felt more especially by the poorer classes in 
regard to fuel, of which the hedges, coppices, furze, and fre- 
quently the farmers' hurdles, constitute to many their chief 
supply. To meet a considerable evil of this kind Lord Portman, 
in 1824, established in the villages on his estates near Blandford 
a fuel-house, which was supplied by the woodman, who served out 
wood to the poor at the cost of cartage. Tliis, with the deter- 
mination oi the magistrates not to punish merely for hedge- 
