Rare. OCLC/COPAC records a handful of copies in the United Kingdom but National Agricultural Library only in the US. The National Library of Scotland have a second edition (“Printed for William Coke, Leith”) which is the first edition with a cancel title-page (see the online catalogue).
A detailed and practical Scottish guide to keeping dairy cattle and making butter and cheese with the aim of increasing the volume of dairy product produced without further cost to the farmer.
The author, James Stele, has not been identified but he remarks in his preface that he lived some distance from the printer of this book (who was in Glasgow). The book covers - in short sections - the best pasturing, feed and shelter for cattle (with a section on sheep later on) before covering the making of cheese and butter by various methods. Stele at one point complains about the lack of interest in agricultural books in Scotland:
“It is a great loss to farmers in this country, that good books on agriculture or farming are so little read and attended to. We imagine there is not a farmer, possessing half a plough of land in all Scotland, but would be able to derive more than ten times the prices of the best book to be found on agriculture, and be sufficiently recompensed for all his pains. Besides, it may be observed, that there are many warmers, and of no great wealth, who make no manner or scruple to purchase volumes of songs, plays, romances, and what not, while they would grude to lay put a guinea, or the half of it, to purchase some proper books on agriculture….” (p.55-6)
There are sections on judging and improving the quality of the milk and the vital importance of a “cool, well-aired milk house”, or dairy, that is free from damp and strong odorous smells (p.96) Stele also provides details of all the equipment required in the butter and cheese making process. The process is described in step-by-step instructions and there is a comprehensive list of the most common errors. The books ends with the production of a cheese:
“As to chusing cheese of a good quality, we scarcely can give any proper information; only it may be observed, beside pleasing the taste, persons best seen in this, wish to pitch upon one pretty firm in consistence, and of a smooth surface; which when pressed with the thumb or fingers, rather gives way directly inwards…” (p.215)
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