"If civilized people were ever to lapse into the worship of animals, the Cow would certainly be their chief goddess. What a fountain of blessings is the Cow! She is the mother of beef, the source of butter, the original cause of cheese, to say nothing of shoe-horns, hair-combs and upper leather. A gentle, amiable, ever-yielding creature, who has no joy in her family affairs which she does not share with man. We rob her of her children that we may rob her of her milk, and we only care for her when the robbing may be perpetrated."
The association has, directly or indirectly, brought about many valuable reforms and improvements in dairying. Its London shows have provided, year after year, a variety of object-lessons in cheese, in butter and in dairy equipment. In order to demonstrate to producers what is the ideal to aim at, there is nothing more effective than a competitive exhibition of products, and the approach to uniform excellence of character in cheese and butter of whatever kinds is most obvious to those who remember what these products were like at the first two or three dairy shows. Simultaneously there has been a no less marked advance in the mechanical aids to dairying, including, in particular, the centrifugal cream-separator, the crude germ of which was first brought before the public at the international dairy show held at Hamburg in the spring of 1877. The association in good time set the example, now beneficially followed in many parts of Great Britain, of providing means for technical instruction in the making of cheese and butter, by the establishment of a dairy school in the Vale of Aylesbury, subsequently removing it to new and excellent premises at Reading, where it is known as the British Dairy Institute. The initiation of butter-making contests at the annual dairy shows stimulated the competitive instinct of dairy workers, and afforded the public useful object-lessons; in more recent years milking competitions have been added. Milking trials and butter tests of cows conducted at the dairy shows have afforded results of much practical value. Many of the larger agricultural societies have found it expedient to include in their annual shows a working dairy, wherein butter-making contests are held and public demonstrations are given.