DAIRY

(Dey, milk, obsol. "Eng.) An apartment in a house, or a separate building, for the purpose of holding milk and manufacturing it into butter, cheese, or other dairy produce. On a small scale, where butter only is made from milk, the dairy may be a room in the north side of the dwelling-house; or it may form one of the offices connected with the kitchen court. The requisites fur the room to contain the milk are — an equal temperature throughout the year, viz. between 48° and 55°; sufficient ventilation to carry off all bad smells and impurities in the air; and the exclusion of flies and other insects. An equable temperature is maintained by thick or by hollow walls, and by double windows. In winter the temperature is somewhat raised by the warm milk, and in summer it is cooled to the degree required by ventilation and the evaporation of water poured on the floor. The ventilation is effected by opening the glazed sashes of the windows, and supplying their places by wire shutters, aud indeed one of the best modes of arranging the windows of a dairy is to have wooden shutters outside for closing in the most severe weather in winter; next, a fixed frame of wirework to exclude the flies; and within this, at three or four inches distance, the glazed sash, which should be made to open. A dairy on a large scale is most conveniently arranged as a detached building; in which case, it contains a milk room, a ehurning-room, and a dairy scullery, or place for scalding the utensils. If cheese is to be made, a room will be required for the cheese pre and another for drying the cheeses. The quantity of milk raised in the vicinity of London for the supply of the inhabitants, aud the revenue derived from the sale of it, show the importance of this article. In his valuable work on cattle, their breeds, , " Mr. Youatt estimates the number of dairy-cows, at present kept in London and its environs, at 12,000; affording, on Mr. Middle ton's hypothesis, an annual supply of 38,400,000 quarts of milk. Now, as milk is sold by the retailers at from 3d. to4d. a quart, after the cream is separated from it, and as the cream is usually sold at from 2s. Cd. to 3s. a quart, and there is reason to suspect that a good deal of water is intermixed with ihe milk, we should hardly be warranted in estimating that the milk, as obtained from the cow, is sold at le than 5d. a quart, which gives 800,CKX'i. as the total price of the milk consumed in the city and its immediaie vicinity." (MCulloch's Statistics, 2d ed. vol. i. p. 490.) [s. 330]