466 
WISCONSIN STATE AORICULTURAL SOCIETY. 
at the present, in a still higher advancement to crown their labors- 
with thanksgiving and gratitude to the benignant Father of Mercies, 
for the successes they shall achieve and enjoy. 
AMERICAN DAIRYING-. 
BY X. A. WILLARD, A. M. 
Read before the National Agricultural Congress at Philadelphia, IWb. 
Gentlemen: — Dairying is of very ancient origin. The manu¬ 
facture of cheese and butter was known and practiced more than 
three thousand years ago. In the earliest history of the human 
race mention is made of cheese and butter, and there is reason ta 
believe that these products were known and used as food many 
ages before the earliest record of them by writers of antiquity. 
The earliest notice of the manufacture of cheese in the Bible is 
where Job, complaining of life, says: “ Hast Thou not poured me 
out as milk, and curdled me as cheese?” David was sent to his 
brethren in the Valley of Elah with this injunction: “ Carry these 
ten cheeses to the captain of their thousands and look how thy 
brethren fare.” 
Homer, the grand old poet of the Greeks, makes record of the 
dairy in the following lines, written nearly a thousand years before 
the Christian era: 
“ Around the grot we gaze, and all in view 
In order ranged, cur admiration drew. 
The bending shelves with loaves ol cheeses pressed, 
The folded flocks, each separate from the rest.” 
Julius Csesar says the principal food of the Germans in his day- 
consisted of milk, cheese and flesh, and he gives a similar account 
of the Gauls or ancient inhabitants of France. 
Allusion to butter is several times made in the Old Testament, 
but the earliest is in Genesis, in Abraham’s time. When he had 
washed the feet of the angel visitors, and given them a little cold 
water, it is recorded: “ He took butter and milk and the calf which 
he had dressed, and set it before them, and he stood by them under 
the tree and they did eat.” 
