CORRESPONDENCE.

Te Aroha News, Volume XI, Issue 1739, 15 May 1895, Page 2

CORRESPONDENCE.

[Under no circumstances whatever is the Editor responsible for matter contained in correspondence ]

(to the Editor.)

Sir,— ln your issue of Saturday there is an article on the profits' of dairy farming, which from the bright coloring of the presented statements brought to mind the line, ‘ Hope, once told a flattering tale.’ It is a well known fact that nothing is more mentally bewildering than figures. At the same time no mental exercise will so bring the* mind down to the region of sober reality and clear perception as grasping a display of figures. The annual balance - sheets of County Councils, Road Boards, Town ■ Boards, and kindred institutions, I have, loag given up from, sheer impossibility of analysing the statements, and presenting to my mind a clear conception of the implied conclusions. As for the’figures •of the General Government, and the exports from the colony, I look at them as if I saw them not, so utterly incomprehensible are they, to me, hut iu the figures and accompanying statements in the article under review, ,plain reasoning can see: through, them, and I will point out two or three.. Ac cording to the paper a daily farmer supplied to a creamery an average of 40 gallons of milk a day for a period of 30 weeks; the produce of an average of 17 cows, for which he received a total.of £IOO or equal to .3d and \ of a penny per gallon. v His Sundays milk of 40 gallons yielded l2lbs of butter for which he got 8d per lb. If he had kept the whole of the milk at-home and made the butter himself at 12lbs a day would have been 721bs a week or £2 Bs, whereas for the cream alone from the creamery he got £3 6s 8d a,week average. The butter, if he had made it, would have realised £72, the cream alone without any trouble realised £, lOC as put forth, or extra money to the amount of £2B. A curious-jumble of facts. Again for milk at a creamery to average 3d and £ of a penny per gallon must be very good indeed, yet-he only- made 12lbs of butter from 40 gallons of milk, a very poor recommendation; for liis cows. It is considered very poor milk that will no t yield lib of butter to two gallons of milk, yet in this case it took 8 and £ gallons to produce a lb, not i much profit there. I pity the factory | that took his milk, and if from such cows he can show, that he made nearly an average of £lO per head, he is a lucky man indeed, for the statements are a bewildering tale. ; —l am, etc., . Hestry J. Hawkins.