66 BOAUD OF AGRICULTURE. 



in arriving at satisfactory conclusions. It is this : Strict!}' speak- 

 ing, no dairyman ever made a pound of butter in the world, for 

 butter is not made in the dairy room, but only separated from milk. 

 The best butter is obtained when the oil or fatty portion of milk 

 yielded by good cows, upon sweet feed, is most perfectly separ- 

 ated from the other ingredients of the milk. The quality of butter 

 necessarily depends in a great degree upon any inherent pcculari- 

 ties in the secreting systems of the cows yielding the milk, and 

 on the food and treatment which they receive. Any cow will yield 

 a better quality of butter when at good clover pasture, than she 

 can when in a poor, weedy one. No possible skill in manipulation 

 or management can prevent a marked difference in the product. 

 Treated alike, and consuming the same kind of food, a Jersey cow, 

 as a general rule, will yield butter of a deeper yellow color, better 

 consistence and richer flavor, than a common cow. 



With cheese the case is different, for this is not simply the case- 

 in of the milk separated from its other ingredients. Cheese-making 

 is a proper manufacture ; its product is a compound, embracing 

 both the butter and casein, together with a portion of the water, 

 sugar and mineral ingredients of the milk, and some salt also is 

 added.* Nor is this all, for the complex mixture above named, 

 however well compounded and prepared thus far, is little else than 

 a lump of pressed curd until it undergoes what is known as " cur- 

 ing," or "ripening," which involves a sort of fermentation, during 

 which very considerable changes take place in the chemical con- 

 dition and combination of its constituents, accompanied with cor- 

 responding changes in the flavor and character. It has been very 

 justly remarked, that " cheese-making is a trade by itself; an art 

 that needs to be constantly and carefully studied, and learned by 

 loiKgand patient practice, as other arts are learned." 



* Salt is usually mixed with butter also, but it ought to be so mainly for the pur- 

 pose of flavor or relish, and not to keep it from rancidity, to vrhich it may be liable 

 in consequence of casein (curd) being left in it. Salt is used in the manufacture of 

 cheese because casein iiecessarily forms a principal ingredient of cheese ; and casein 

 being a nitrogenous animal substance, like flesh, ie as liable to putridity as fresh 

 beef ; while butter, or the separated fatty part of milk, contains no nitrogen, and 

 if pure, is no more liable to spontaneous putridity than beef tallow. Cheese con- 

 taining usually about thirty per cent, of casein requires for its manufacture and 

 preservation only from two to three per cent, of salt ; while bultcr, which ouglit not 

 to have any casein in it (altliough it usually does contain some,) to be kept from 

 becoming putrid, requires, to Jlavor it properly, about twice as much — say five 

 I)er cent , or nearly an ounce of salt to a pound of butter. 



