532 
Dairy- Farming in the Netherlands. 
but the general rule of a day's wages paying the week's rent of 
a cottage is almost, but not quite, maintained. 
Air. Sluis ma}- be cited as a favourable example of the better 
class of Dutch farmer. W ith 112 acres of grass, 12 or 13 of 
arable land, 70 head of cattle or thereabouts, and 100 to 160 
sheep on the farm, making cheese twice a day, he has six men 
and two women servants, with his wife and family, and his own 
aid and supervision to do the work. Although he speaks no 
foreign language, he has twice been to England for the purpose 
of seeing the shows of the Royal Agricultural Society of Eng- 
land, namely, at Wolverhampton in 1871, and Hull in 1873 ; 
and he purchased on these occasions several agricultural imple- 
ments by the best makers, especially mowing-machines, horse- 
rakes, and hay-^tedders. He has also been to Denmark to study 
the Swartz system of setting milk, and he bought there the 
milk-cans and other apparatus necessary for setting milk at a 
low temperature. His house, as is usual in A orth Holland, and 
indeed in most parts of the Netherlands, is under the same roof 
as the cow-stalls, stables, and hay-barn. Everything was not 
only scrupulously clean at the time of my visit in October 1879, 
but what with finely-raked sand over the tesselated pavement of 
the cow-stalls, the matting over the glazed trough which, in the 
winter, while the cows were in the stalls, carried away the urine, 
the lace curtains to the small windows, each of which lighted 
its own particular cow-stall, the rows of globular cheeses under- 
going the process of curing, the dairy utensils polished and 
scrubbed up to the zenith of brightness and cleanliness, one 
was forcibly reminded of M. Havard's description of a North 
Holland homestead, which was borne out by the presence of 
Mrs. Sluis and her daughters in the salon, and, I hope, also by 
the condition of Mr. Sluis's banking account.* 
Co-oj)erative Dairying. — Several farmers in the Hoorn dis- 
* " Yous connaissez de reputation ces merveiUeuses etables, carreleca de 
faiences et sable'es de difierentes couleurs. plus propres qu'un salon, oil I on ne 
doit ni fumer, ui tousser, ni ciacber, dont on no ptut fouler le snl, sans avoir au 
prealable cbausse' de gros subots blantbis, ct dans lesquelles les belles vacbes, 
blancbes et noires, symetriquement range'es sur des litieres toujours fraielies, 
ont la queue attacl.ee au plafond, de jieur qu'en dcs moments de'lioats, elles 
ne vienneut a se barbouillcr. He bien, c'est dans ccs jolis hamcaux qu'on les 
trouve, CCS etables incompa rabies, avec leur arsenal de seaus, de brocstt de pots, 
brillants, polis, luisants a faire croire qu'ils sont d'or ou de vermeil. 
" Quelquefois, au bout de I'e'table, vous apercevez un salon avec de belles et 
fraielies jeuncs filles, aux grands bonutts, au casque dore', travaillant a quelques 
menues fantaisics ou tissant de charmautes/r/i-o/j7e's. C'lst que beaucoup de ces 
pay sans Bont des niillionnaircs enfernie's dans leur froniages,'vivant avecune large 
eimplicite', tans pie'occupation dans I'esprit, sans passion dans le cceur, ignorant 
cc qui se passe au loin, pen toucieux de co qui se fait aupres, et entassant chaque 
anne'e des piles d'argent sur des piles d'or." — ' La HoUande pittoresque : Voyage 
aux villes mortcs du Zuiderzee,' par M. Henri Havard, 2me e'dit.,pp. 124 and 125, 
