REPORT.

In submitting this, the Eighth Annual Report of the Department of Agriculture, I will call your attention to the fact that the working divisions have not been changed since making my former report. They are as follows:

First Division.-Comprising the following counties: Albany, Otsego, Rensselaer, Saratoga, Schenectady, Schoharie and Washington.

Second Division.-Comprising the following counties: Kings, New York, Queens, Richmond and Suffolk.

Third Division.-Comprising the following counties: Columbia, Delaware, Dutchess, Greene, Orange, Putnam, Rockland, Sullivan, Ulster and Westchester.

Fourth Division.-Comprising the following counties: Essex, Fulton, Hamilton, Herkimer, Montgomery, Oswego, Oneida and Warren.

Fifth Division.-Comprising the following counties: Clinton, Franklin, Jefferson, Lewis and St. Lawrence.

Sixth Division.-Comprising the following counties: Broome, Chenango, Cortland, Madison, Onondaga, Tioga and Tompkins. Seventh Division.-Comprising the following counties: Chemung, Genesee, Livingston, Schuyler, Steuben and Wyoming. Eighth Division.-Comprising the following counties: Cayuga, Monroe, Ontario, Seneca, Wayne and Yates.

Ninth Division.-Comprising the following counties: Erie, Niagara and Orleans.

Tenth Division.-Comprising the following counties: Allegany, Cattaraugus and Chautauqua.

The Assistant Commissioners in charge of the divisions during the fiscal year just ended are the same as those reported in my last annual report with the exception that in the ninth

division, in the place of Mr. Asa L. Twitchell, of Springville, N. Y., who was removed for cause, I appointed from the civil service eligible list John H. Grant, M. D., a veteran, of Buffalo, N. Y.

The divisions are ten and the Assistant Commissioners in charge of them are as follows:

There have been no changes in the employees of this Department during the last fiscal year, all new appointees having been chosen from the civil service eligible list in accordance with the rules of that commission and the law under which it operates.

The general work of this Department consists in enforcing the provisions of the law relating to:

(1) Providing butter and cheese experts to give instruction in the art of making uniform, first-class butter and cheese. (2) Providing against the sale or delivery to factories or creameries of impure, unhealthy or unwholesome milk.

(3) Providing against keeping of cows for the production of milk for sale or exchange in a crowded or unhealthful condition, and against feeding such cows on distillery waste or on any substance that will produce unwholesome or unhealthful milk. (4) Regulating the sale of condensed milk.

(5) Providing against the manufacture and sale of imitation. butter and its use in boarding-houses and places of public entertainment.

(6) Providing against the sale and manufacture of imitation cheese.

(7) Providing for branding full cream cheese as "New York State full cream cheese" and against falsely branding butter or cheese.

(8) Providing against the manufacture and sale of adulterated or imitation vinegar.

(9) Providing for the suppression of infectious and contagious diseases among domestic animals, except tuberculosis and glanders.

(10) Providing for the prevention of diseases among bees. (11) Providing for the prevention and suppression of contagious and infectious diseases in fruit trees, plants, etc.

(12) Providing against the manufacture and sale of Paris green, except as provided in the statute.

(13) Providing for the encouragement of the sugar-beet culture and the manufacture of beet sugar in the State.

(14) Providing against the manufacture and sale of adulterated linseed or flaxseed oil.

(15) Providing against the selling of "bob veal," i. e. meat from calves under four weeks of age or from calves that were diseased at the time of killing.

(16) Providing for the distribution of moneys for the promotion of agriculture to the agricultural societies of the State. (17) Relative to Farmers' Institutes.

(18) Providing against selling adulterated or imitation maple syrup or maple sugar.

(19) To exercise such supervision as is provided relative to the New York State Agricultural Experiment Station and the Agricultural Experiment Station at Cornell University.

(20) Relating to process butter and the use of preservatives in dairy products.

(21) Relating to use of coloring matter in food products. (22) Relating to the use of the Babcock test.

MILK.

It would appear that conditions existing at the present time are very much the same as last year, viz.: That the reports of the different divisions show that the consumption of milk is

upon the increase, about two per cent. more milk having been drawn from the country districts to supply the cities' wants this year than the previous year, showing that the consumption of milk is annually on the increase. The milk routes are extending farther into the interior of the State each year. A continuation of this increase yearly would indicate that ultimately the prin cipal product of the farms of New York State will be milk for city consumption. This is already true in many portions of the State. There is one comparatively new feature being introduced in the milk business in the last few years which will benefit both the producer and the consumer, viz.: The strife between a certain class of milkmen to see who can furnish the best milk. This class of milk dealers are bottling milk and securing a good price for it. Milk put up in this manner will show, comparatively, to the purchaser the amount of cream or fat that the milk contains, and dealers are willing to pay better prices for this grade of milk. This will tend to induce the farmers to produce quality as well as quantity. The method of purchasing and handling milk in the past has had a tendency toward the production of quantity at the expense of quality, i. e. there was nothing in the method of handling milk in times past whereby its richness could in any way be determined in a relative degree by the consumer, but the method of bottling, if followed as it should be, will have a tendency thus to warn the purchaser, as the amount of cream that naturally rises on the milk can be seen through the glass.

SKIMMED MILK.

In my last annual report to your honorable body I called your attention to the fact that this Department was having some difficulty in determining just whether actions should or should not be brought against certain milkmen who were selling skimmed milk. The difficulty arose from the fact that if a man was selling it as and for skimmed milk he had a legal right so to do, but if he was selling it for whole milk he had no right to do so, and that the fact was so peculiarly within his knowledge as to make it difficult for this Department to determine, unless we adopted