128 MEALS MEDICINAL. 
nature. For which reason the salutary effects wrought by good 
Butter, and similar animal fats, in oiling the intestinal machinery 
for its better, and easier working, is made manifest. 
_ Thomas Parr, the “ olde, olde, very olde man,” who lived to 
the authenticated age of one hundred and fifty-two years, in 
Shropshire, and then died through a change of foods when 
invited to stay with the Earl of Arundel (in 1635), has been des- 
cribed respecting his methods for longevity, by John Taylor, the 
Water Poet, in lines written a month before Parr’s death :— 
** He was of old Pythagoras’ opinion 
That green cheese is most wholesome with an onion : 
His physic was good butter, which the soil 
Of Salop yields, more sweet than candy oil ; 
And garlick he esteemed above the rate 
Of Venice treacle, or best mithridate. 
Coarse *meslin bread ; and for his daily swig 
Milk, butter-milk, and water, whey, and whig : 
Sometimes metheglin, and by fortune happy 
He sometimes sipped a cup of ale most nappy. 
He entertained no gout ; no ache he felt ; 
The air was good, and temperate where he dwelt.” 
Butter-makers have recently learnt to regard as friends those 
special microbes, without the presence of which the cream does 
not become sour. All good Butter is churned from cream which 
has been allowed to stand for this purpose a certain number of 
hours, partly because soured cream yields more butter than fresh 
cream, but chiefly because the flavour of the Butter is improved 
in this way. It is now believed that better flavours can be pro- 
duced by certain bacteria over those of others, and therefore these 
higher-class bacteria are purposely put into cultivation. Also the 
quality of Butter depends intimately on the breed of cows from 
which the milk is got, as well as on the nature of their food ; 
and its degree of excellence becomes determined by the place 
where it is grown, and the mode of its preparation. This influence 
of the food was expressed by the rustic writers of Rome, in the 
saying, “ Pabuli ‘sapor apparet in lacte”—“ By the milk we 
discover what has been the cow’s fodder.” Of the prejudicial 
flavours imparted to milk by food containing wild plants of 
the garlic tribe, and other such vegetables as generate sulphuretted 
hydrogen through their essential oils, only smal! portions are 
. Meslin bread, or Mashlum, was made of a mixture of several kinds 
of our. , ne a Re ¢ Sa de e cat if * ie ~ : - 
