ON DAIR Y FARMING.

BY \V. K. HULKE.

No. I— A MARKET FOR OUR BUTTER. In my letter of last Saturday I mentioned that with an increase of dairy produce outside dealers would enter the market and compete with the local storekeeper. lam now able to confirm that statement — as an outsider has clearod the market of £500 worth of keg butter, and is open to purchase good dairies of fresh at an advance on the usual market price. But the barter system effectually prevents much business being done in that line — most of the producers being on the books of the local dealer, and are in honor bound to him until presented with a clear balance-sheet. So much for the truck system. Now let us take a look at the open market system — as shown by a most able writer, the late Mr. G. G. Richardson, in his work " The Corn and Cattle Districts of France." The writer, speaking of Normandy, says : "In the butter season the butter is taken >to market made, but not salted, or prepared for export or local consumption ; it is there purchased by dealers, whose trade it is to manufacture it, either for the local market or for exportation. It 1 is then sent off in large earthenware jars, or tinned or wrapped in cloths, in baskets. The market during the butter season in one of these towns presents a most curious sight, being yellow with enormous piles of butter, great lumps of it being exposed for sale on the ! stalls, which the dealers inspect, taste, and bargain for. In La Bessin, near Isigny, there are farms tvhich sell £1000 worth of butty/ yearly, and one French firm's commission confined to the butter trade (managed by a woman), comes to £S,OOO *a-year on its sales. The highest price for salt butter in* 1876 — manufactured at Isigny by a wholesale house — was £10 10s. per cwt., and the lowest £7 75. ; and the same firm's (M.Demagney) sales for 1876, reached £160,000, the bulk of the butter going to the Brazils — butter exported from Copenhagen in the same period realised — highest, £8 125. ; lowest, £7 2s. 6d. ; the butter in both cases being of first-class quality. This butter realised (retail in tins), 2s. 9d. per lb. ; that sold by the firm of M. Demagney 3d. to 9d. per lb. over that exported from Copenhagen, thus showing the value of a superior make and a well-merifced confidence in the brand." Our local butter-makers ought to well note this : let one once establish his name as the maker of a superior article, and he can command the market, and, with it, extract something more valuable than butter-milk from the dealers' pockets, who compete ; eagerly to obtain the brand commands the market. The open market has so cultivated the taste that a good, expert in the trade, at an exhibition of butter held in Paris in 1875, at which 850 samples were shown, could tell each sample, and but of fifteen of the most choice that were selected by tlie judge, the dealer, although he had his back turned, actually named each samplo on his tasting it, in precisely the same order as the judges had previously placed them. I have mentioned the name of but one firm,but there are many others engaged in the butter trade. Our colonial dealers may take heart, for they have a wide field before them to export to. England alone takes over £10,000,000 worth yearly, most of which is obtained from the Continent i — Denmark, Sweden, and Holland [ standing in the front rank in dairy produce. America is also now closely treading in the same footsteps ; then why should not New Zealand do so likewise ? I know of nothing to prevent a most profitable trade being carried on with the Home country in butter alone — to say nothing about cheese. Modern science has already made discoveries sufficient to warrant us to commence the undertaking, and with a cold air chamber fitted up in one of the large wheat-ships sailing from Lyttelton— -a new life would be given to trade, and no class would feel its benefit more than our bush settlers. I unhesitatingly say that the future '' prosperity of that hardworking class depends on the sale of their dairy produce, and to effect this, a better system • both as regards dairy management and mode of packing must be introduced, of which I shall write in my next article.