382 DANISH BUTTER AND EGG TRADE. 

or 6 a.m. and ceases about 7 p.m.; in winter work begins 
usually about an hour or an hour and a-half later than in 
summer, and ceases about one and a-half to two hours 
earlier, while one or both of the intervals for breakfast and 
tea are dropped and the mid-day meal is restricted to half an 
hour or an hour at the most. 

DANISH BUTTER AND EGG TRADE. 
The Danish Agricultural Commission at the Paris Exhibi- 
tion has prepared a volume, edited by Mr. Rudolf Schou, on 
the development of agriculture in Denmark during the last 
fifty years, from which the following information has been 
taken. 
Fifty years ago cattle breeding and dairying were of com- 
paratively small importance in Denmark. Even then there 
was, however, some export of butter, that going to Great 
Britain being sent via Kiel and Hamburg. In those days 
the trade was not organized, and delivery was very irregular. 
Increased production and improved means of transport 
effected a change: the butter was delivered weekly to the 
merchant, who paid for it according to a quotation fixed, after 
1880, by a syndicate of merchants at Copenhagen, and direct 
shipments were made by steamboat tc England. The greater 
portion of the butter, and especially the better qualities, then 
came from estate dairies. 
The formation of co-operative dairies shortly after 1880 by 
the peasants soon brought about a great increase in quantity, 
while the quality was not long in equalling that from the 
estate dairies. It was at this period that the Danes began 
to turn their chief attention from the cultivation of cereals to 
the production of milk. There was no longer any butter of 
inferior quality ; nearly all the milk in the country was used 
for butter, and the excess of exports, which in 1875-85 had 
been about 200,000—260,000 cwts., rose in 1895 to 1,115,000 
cwts. 
The prices fixed at Copenhagen, which had previously beea 
