522 
Dairy-Farming in the Netherlands. 
large copper vessels which are immersed in a bath of cold 
water, fed by a pump from a well. The water is really cold, 
and the milk remains in this cooling bath from 1^ to 2^ hours. 
It is then transferred to shallow earthenware pans in an under- 
ground cellar, constructed to keep it as cool as possible. Cream 
is first taken after the milk has stood for 12 hours, and again 
two or three times at further intervals of 12 hours. The cream 
of the successive skimmings is mixed together, and churned in 
a piston churn, which is about half filled or a little more. It 
takes about 1 hour to 1:^ hour to bring the butter, because the 
dasher is generally not large enough for the churn. Churning 
on the larger farms is done by horse-power, but throughout the 
Netherlands, on small farms, or where only a small quantity of 
butter is made, churning is done by a dog walking inside a large 
wheel or "upon an inclined endless band — in either case a kind 
of treadmill arrangement. 
The butter having come, it is collected, well washed, and left 
to drain in a large tub until the evening, when it is kneaded by 
the hand, salted, and placed for a certain time in " pickle." 
Each lump of butter is always carefully marked with a cross, 
and in some cases the devotional symbols have evidently been 
carved out with considerable labour. The next day the butter is 
packed in kegs, and it is either sent to market once a week, or 
is bought direct by the butter merchants. The price obtained 
by most farmers at the beginning of June in 1880 appeared to 
be about Is. 6d. per English lb., but it must be remembered that 
this Delft butter is exceptionally rich and luscious. One farmer 
whom I visited, however, was very proud of an invention of 
his own. He mixed with the cream one-fourth of its bulk 
of new milk, and added a litre of sour buttermilk. This, 
he said, increased the quantity of butter and made it come 
sooner ; but although he owned that he did not get more than 
Is. Ad. per lb. for his product, I could not make him understand 
that the leason was that he produced a mixture of butter and 
curd. 
The Swartz system of cooling milk is being gradually intro- 
duced into the district, and as it simply means a continuation 
throughout of the process of cooling, which is now adopted as 
the first stage in the setting of the cream, the change will be 
easily effected. Some farmers also put some cold water into 
the earthenware pans before the milk is turned into them. 
The skim-milk is nearly always sold to the Hague or Rot- 
terdam, in casks containing 80 litres (about 18 gallons), at about 
2s. Gd. per cask, the consignees paying the cost of carriage. In 
other cases it is made into skim-cheese in the same manner as 
the so-called " Derbyshire " cheese in the Gouda district which 
