120 MAINE STATE SOCIETY. 



cliurn, and one and a half ounce of rock salt and one-third of an 

 ounce of refined loaf sugar to each pound of butter thoroughly in- 

 corporated with a wooden slice ; it was then kept in an ice-cellar for 

 twelve hours, when it was worked over under the roller and packed 

 close in layers of about three inches in thickness — covered with a 

 cloth on which was spread half an inch of fine salt, and kept in the 

 dairy cellar covered with blankets to keep it from the air as much 

 as possible. 



In your fifth question you ask, "What kind of pasturage do you 

 find best for cows ? and do you find any difference in the quality of 

 your butter or cheese arising from feeding on different species of 

 grasses or herbage?" To suppose that good butter can be made 

 from low land pasture, where little else is grown but brakes and 

 coarse sour grasses, is, if possible, equally absurd as to suppose that 

 "grapes can be gathered from thorns, and figs from thistles," or 

 that courtesy and justice can be expected from a "border ruffian." 

 To make good butter, you must procure a good cow ; that is, a cow 

 that will give a good quantity of yellow rich milk ; for if a cow 

 will grow fat in a good pasture when in milk, you may be sure that 

 a large share of what she consumes has been converted into muscle 

 and fat instead of going into the milk pail. Good butter cannot be 

 made from thin white milk, from which the oil has been absorbed 

 by the system of the cow. Next in importance, is a good high land 

 pasture, the more white honeysuckle it produces the better, it being 

 the richest and best of the English grasses — the Butch or red clover 

 being the next best, a few dandelions being desirable to give color 

 to the butter. Butter is a chemical oil or extract, the cow's stomach 

 the laboratory, and as a consequence, the richer the herbage on which 

 the cow is fed, the richer and better the butter, unless it is injured 

 in the manufacture. 



In your eighth question you ask, " Have you made any compara- 

 tive experiments in regard to the yield of butter from milk churned, 

 or cream churned alone ; and what have been the results?" We 

 churned milk as an experiment, and found that the quantity of butter 

 obtained was no more than when the cream alone was churned, and 

 that it took so long for the butter to come, or collect, that it was 

 soft and white, with a flat and insipid taste — that the butter was 

 materially injured by the too long process of churning. We visited 



