94 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. 



apt to run into putrefaction. This liability to putrefy is developed 

 with greatest rapidity when under the iufluence of other substances 

 in which decay has already begun. For instance, a piece of fresh 

 meat placed in a perfectly clean vessel, and the air about it pure 

 also, may keep good many days, some weeks perhaps, while if it 

 be put in one only apparently clean, and which has had. tainted 

 meat in it previously, it will begin to putrefy in a short time. The 

 exciting cause, although, in this case, invisible, is as really opera- 

 tive as a visible amount of filth would be. Its action is that of a 

 ferment, — similar to that of yeast ; a little leaven leavening the 

 whole lump. Any decaying emanation, whether from spilled milk 

 or from any other source, communicates a tendency to the same 

 decay ; and the change once begun, it is very difficult to arrest it. 

 Its effect may not be apparent at once, but the leaven is working. 

 Butter possessing the tendency may 'not while fresh offend the 

 most delicate taste, but it will most surely develop so as to be 

 plainly perceptible after being kept". 



Ferments are destroyed at the heat of boiling water, 212°. Boil- 

 ing water will readily cleanse vessels in which milk has been kept 

 if they be of tin or other metal. Possibly a slightly lower tempera- 

 ture may suffice for metallic vessels, but certainly not for wood ; 

 and it is safer in all cases not only to have the kettle "sing" but 

 the water to dance. Wood is porous and absorbs more or less 

 milk, and be it ever so little which finds a Iddgjpent in it, there is 

 no security against the propagation of the peculiar ferment. In a 

 note from Dr. E. Holmes, he relates from his experience on this 

 point, thus : " The following fact shows not only the importance 

 of having vessels for holding milk purely clean, but made of mate- 

 rials easily kept so. We purchased a new wooden pail, unpainted 

 inside, for a milk pail. The usual care was taken to scald, wash 

 Aand dry it, every time it was used. It was found after being used 

 some time, that if the milk was allowed to remain in it say from a 

 quarter to half an hour before being strained, particles of loppered 

 milk would be found gathered in the crease or angle formed at the 

 junction of the bottom and sides ; and no amount of scalding or 

 scrubbing would prevent it. It became advisable to throw it aside 

 and use a tin one in its place, when the trouble ceased. Was it 

 not that particles of the milk, at some time, had become absorbed 

 and lodged so deeply in the pores of the wood as to be out of the 

 reach of scalding water, (wood being a poor conductor of heat,) 



