pertaining to milk in as cleanly a way as possible; if not now, some day.

A Maine dairyman has said that next to a dead dog a coat of whitewash was most needed on dairy farms. Whitewashing adds to the sense of cleanliness as well as to its actuality; and it serves to prompt a man to better practice.

BETTER PRODUCTS.

Milk.—One Indian summer day in the middle of last November, coming north from a meeting of chemists at Washington, I stopped off at Newark, N. J., and went west by trolley car a dozen miles to see a herd of 600 cows which made milk for the city trade. On arrival I was shown into the dairy room. In due time a bell rung and I went across to one of the barns. The milkers came in from the fields. Every man took off his soiled clothes, washed his face, hands and hair most thoroughly, cleaned his nails, using a scrubbing brush, put on a white duck suit which had been steamed and boiled that morning to cleanse it. These men, having dressed with more care than most men dress for the parlor, took steamed and sterilized milk pails and went upstairs into the cow parlor. The cows were bedded well and carefully cared for. The manure was frequently removed from the barn into the cellar below. A file of a dozen milkers marched down one of the long alleys, almost with the precision of a military company, and began milking. A barn man had preceded them, had got the cows up, and had brushed off bellies, flanks and udders. milk was milked into strainer pails. Every effort was made to get that milk in the very best condition possible. As soon as a man finished milking a cow he took the milk to the end of a long alley. It was strained through several thicknesses of cotton and sent off on an overhead trolley an eighth of a mile to the dairy room. There everything is kept absolutely clean by the use of live steam and much elbow grease. The milk was immediately cooled, and I had within fifteen minutes from the time it was in the cow's udder a glass of ice cold milk to drink-the most delicious milk I ever tasted. This milk sells for 12 cents a quart and the 600 cows do not make enough to meet the demand.

The

Mr. H. B. Gurler of DeKalb, Ill., the first instructor in our dairy school, makes milk for Chicago trade in much the same way. He sent milk to the Paris Exposition last fall. It got there in perfectly sweet condition and showed no traces of souring until it was almost four weeks old. It had been neither heated nor preserved by any of the many devilish chemical nostrums now on the market. It was simply clean milk and it kept thus long simply because it was clean.

Butter.-The milkman has no use for bacteria. The butter maker has, but he wants the right kind. The ripening of cream is caused by the growth within the cream of these little

plants. There are good and bad plants of this minute kind as there are of the larger kind. The ill odors in milk and butter are often caused by bad bacteria.

Most butter is made by haphazard ripening, and usually either the good or the indifferent forms of bacterial growth predominate over those which cause trouble. In order to make this matter more certain, certain ferments are now used for this purpose. Their use should tend to greater uniformity of product. The milk or cream may or may not be pasteurized before their use. Brewers use regularly the same ferment in their vats; our wives when making bread use the identical form of yeast each day. Why not the butter makers? Cheese. Cheese making is more complicated than butter making. The sundry fancy cheeses owe their distinctiveness in large measure to the ferments-bacterial or mould-like— with which the curd is pervaded. They were never better made than they are to-day, and this condition is largely the result of careful investigation.

Sundry products.-Casein, dried milk, dried skim milk, milk sugar, condensed milk, albumen (egg powder) are on the market. Milk, butter and cheese are no longer a dairy triad without rivals. A multitude of products and by-products are being made from milk, and the end is not yet. The twentieth century cow seems fair to be a producer of a hundred rather than of three products. I have some years ago voiced my sentiments before this Association as to the usefulness of skim milk in human feeding. It ought to be used thus almost exclusively, it being a very cheap form of digestible protein.

BETTER SOLD.

This is a most important link in the chain. It were of little avail to put time, thought, labor and money into the improvement of the herd and its product if no monetary advantage accrued., The betterment of the herd can hardly fail to entail an increased income. Not so of the milk, however. Such of you as can market your own products may find it so. But those who have to pool an extra clean, sweet milk at creamery with that made under uncleanly conditions have little reward other than an approving conscience for their pains. To such I would say keep at it; the time is coming when virtue will have a reward other than itself. The alkaline tablet test, the curd test, the nose test, the fermentation test, poor butter and stiffer backbones in the operators' backs will all help to hasten the day of cleaner creamery milk, and of premiums for those who bring it and demerits for those who do not. Make the best and cleanest milk you can afford to produce, put brains into the operation, put milk, butter, or cheese in attractive shape, get your products known and the likelihood of success will be enhanced.

III. NEW NOTIONS.

Prophecies are cheap and are generally worth what they cost. One need not fear, however, that his prophetic hens will come home to roost if he is careful to date his ideas far enough ahead. So I will say that in 1950 such and such will be the vogue as regards milk making.

MILK MAKING.

In 1950 cows will be milked by machinery and fed rations we now do not dream of. Their numbers may not be increased, but their abilities will be vastly augmented. Only the best will be used, for behold, the problem which has vexed the ages, the production of either sex as desired, will have been solved. From the surplus of females the best only need be kept the survival of the fittest. Electricity or some other of the wonderful forces as yet but partly understood will render sanitation and cleanliness easier, cheaper and more certainly effectual. The immunizing theory will have been worked out to its logical conclusion, and all cattle in their early calfhood will be vaccinated-to use a common term-with the sundry toxins, etc., enabling them to resist all disease. I shall mightily miss my guess if means of localizing and killing bacteria within living tissues be not developed. Thus may disease in human and in brute creation be attacked in three different ways, prevented by inoculation, cured by medication, and best of all, eradicated by better methods and a better popular appreciation of them.

And as for the men, as I said at the outset, there will be a new generation. Let it be our work and our pride to give these little folks the best chance. Let us not be like the dwellers in the Azores of whom it is said that they pray ever to be spared the impiety of wishing to know more than did their fathers.

MILK SELLING.

Frozen milk and dried milk which will stay frozen or dried and keep indefinitely will be the common forms in which milk and cream will be sold some day, and each and every dairyman-or some central station for them—will freeze or dry the milk. The immense amount of energy and money spent in transporting dilute products will be incidents of the past. Edison has made millions from concentrating low grade iron ores. Milk will be concentrated some day. Freezing and drying will be done by the use respectively of liquid air and of the stored heat of the sun's rays, or, perhaps, the heat of the interior of the earth. Milk thus dried will be sterile; being dried in a vacuum, its albumen will not be so much coagulated as to lessen its digestibility.

BUTTER AND CHEESE.

Butter will be ripened artificially and in no other way. The products of fermentation rather than the ferments themselves will be used, and a sweet cream butter, flavored as a housewife would flavor a cake with an essence, of a uniform character will result.

Cheese will not be thus flavored, since its ripening is due to other causes and needs slow development. I look for a change here more particularly in the greater appreciation of the dietetic value of the article by the people and its larger

use.

Do these notions sound irrational and impossible? What would our fathers have said of a prophet who, in 1850, had predicted that at the close of the nineteenth century their children would flash New Year's greetings under the ocean from Europe to America; that their sons in New York would whisper soft nothings to their daughters in San Fran cisco; that they would send messages on invisible waves of the air to ships far out of sight at sea and through intervening mountains; that their houses would be warmed and illuminated by the lightning, and that they would travel on the thunderbolt; that they would harness Niagara as a horse, and that its power would do mighty work afar off; that they would look through the human body as through a window, and that they would open the abdomen, perform incredible surgical operations therein without pain and without danger? Would his prophecies have passed current? And yet he would but have predicted such commonplaces of to-day as the ocean cable, the telephone, wireless telegraphy, electrical lighting, heating and power transmission, the X and kindred rays and antiseptic surgery.

Many of my prophecies for 1950 are bound to come true before that date. The logic of events will compel them. Let us be ready for them when they come. Our great duty today, however, seems to me to be to make the best of our present knowledge and opportunities. I have already voiced my appreciation of the lack of encouragement many farmers have to do better. But better cows are possible, better feeding and care are practicable, and both will pay. Better and cleaner milk may not bring larger returns now, but it ought to and will some day. If we but resolve to better our practice so far as in us lies, and make good our resolutions, our example will be helpful in others, twentieth century milk making will be just that much further advanced towards perfection, and that great earthly goal towards which we should all strive will be in some measure attained-the world will be the better because we have lived in it.

SOME OF THE REQUISITES FOR MAKING THE CHEESE INDUSTRY PROFITABLE TO THE VERMONT

DAIRYMAN.

G. A. SMITH, Dairy Expert, New York Agricultural Experiment Station, Geneva, N. Y.

It affords me great pleasure to have the privilege of meeting with you once more and talking about cheese making, and telling you some of the experiences I have had since that time. I remember the discussion we had when I was here before, and the many good points which were brought out. I am sure. I took home many valuable ideas, and I hope you had a like experience. The good that we get out of meetings like the present depends very largely upon the spirit with which we come together. If we come here with preconceived ideas and prejudices thoroughly satisfied in our minds that our way is right and any other plan that may be advanced that does not agree with that system which we have followed is all wrong, it would certainly mean that we could not get any benefit out of a meeting of this character. If we are to get the greatest good possible, we must disabuse our minds of any such feeling, and be willing to meet those who do not agree with us half way, and after careful consideration, it is shown that some other method has given more satisfactory results, accept it to the extent of giving it a thorough, careful trial. The making of cheese is one of the very ancient industries-just when it first began it is hard to tell; but one thing is sure, the history of the whole cheese making industry up to a very recent date has been largely founded on those old traditions which have been handed down from one generation to another. Experience rather than knowledge of principles has been the guide.

When we trace the business in this country from its start in a commercial way in Herkimer county, about 1804, we see that the changes were very slow for a long time, no one appearing to realize that there could be any better way. With the introduction of the co-operative system about 1860, in which a few dairies combined in order to utilize the skill of the most successful maker, there has become a gradual improvement; if it were not so, the business never would have attained any such stupendous proportions as it has to-day. The manufacture of cheese is one of the important dairy