634 Report on the " Workinfj Dairy " at the Derhy Shoiv. 
now so enormous and increasing, that we may well ask ourselves 
whether it is not possible, by greater care in its manufacture 
and more scientific methods of management, to revive the 
fame our country once enjoyed for a product of such universal 
consumption. It is a melancholy thing (for a farmer at least) to 
find himself at each visit to his grocer almost confined in his 
choice of this article to American wares, rarely of a first class, 
and often of a very inferior character. Yet I feel sure that I am 
echoing the universal feeling of consumers in the non-cheese- 
producing districts when I assert that it almost yearly becomes 
a more difficult matter to obtain a fairly good English cheese, — 
whether the Cheshire, Cheddar, or Leicestershire make be 
preferred. Where are the rich buttery Cheddars of our youth, 
which, ripened by age, formed a dish fit for the luncheon of 
a prince? Where the fine fat Stiltons? Alas! these have 
ignominiously succumbed to Gorgonzola, or degenerated into 
delusions and snares, retaining indeed the old names, but 
certainly with no other characteristic in common. 
Again, what a field seems open for the enlarged production of 
milk itself! Out of the four millions of inhabitants in the me- 
tropolis, or the hundreds of thousands who swarm the streets of 
our other great cities, it would be interesting to inquire how 
many receive a daily sufficient supply of this most nutritious of 
foods. Skim-milk and butter-milk might advantageously be 
substituted for many of the drinks of the present day. It 
is surely probable that the temperance movement of the pre- 
sent day may increase the sale of milk to an almost indefinite 
extent, as the folly becomes more apparent to the town workman 
of wasting so large a proportion of his earnings in a hurtful 
indulgence instead of invigorating his faculties by a wholesome 
beverage. 
In view, therefore, of the increasing importance of dairy 
management, and the absolute necessity of reform in the manu- 
facture of some important dairy products, I think that our 
greatest English Society did wisely a few years ago in instituting 
a " Working Dairy " at its annual exhibitions. In a county 
like Derby there is a special fitness in such a show. The im- 
portance of dairy interests in that county may be judged by the 
fact, that while the whole of Great Britain only maintains an 
average stock of one cow or heifer (in-milk or in-calf) to 
each twenty acres of land, Derbyshire just doubles that pro- 
portion, and, according to the latest agricultural returns, possesses 
one such animal to each ten acres. Yet here, in the heart of a 
district not only specially adapted for, but also mainly devoted 
to, dairy management, so great appears to be the apathy with 
regard to the possession — or perhaps, rather, I should say the 
