acquire a reputation for their milk, which they are very careful to preserve. Such firms can exercise a much more satisfactory control over the individual farmer than can even public statute, since, with their systems of inspection, it is possible to have an accurate knowledge of the actual conditions under which the milk is produced. It is plainly within the power of firms dealing in large quantities to control the character of its milk more accurately than can small dealers. Results, too, appear on the whole in favor of the large dealers. In the cities where there is a system of rigid milk inspection it is comparatively seldom that the milk furnished by such companies is found below the standard. This milk is kept up to the standard, and the companies having a chemical laboratory and having milk from many sources can keep the quality of the milk much more uniform than can a dealer whose supply comes from a single farm. The milk inspectors usually find that it is the small dealers that fail to meet the standard. Moreover, it is a fact that where epidemics have been traced to milk it has always been in communities where individual milkmen bring in milk from one or two dairies and distribute it personally. All the epidemics of typhoid that have been definitely traced to milk have been in small communities, and none traced to the milk of large dealers. It is true that it would be difficult or impossible to trace to the milk a typhoid epidemic which might occur in a large city. No one is likely to receive the milk from the same source for two days in succession, and the mixing which the milk receives in the receiving station entirely obliterates the individual source. If there should be some milk brought to the city which contained typhoid bacteria it would be impossible to determine the fact, for such milk, after mixing, would be thoroughly scattered beyond any possibility of following it. We may, then, question somewhat the significance of the fact, but it certainly is true that while serious epidemics have been caused by milk in smaller cities no such instance has occurred in the large cities, or been traced to the milk furnished by companies that handle it in considerable amounts. It would seem that if milk has ever been the cause of such diseases in large cities there ought to have been some evidence of the fact obtained.