264 MASSACHUSETTS AGRICULTURE. 



butter. The Greeks derived a knowledge of it from the Scyth- 

 ians, or Thracians, and the Romans from the Germans. Milk 

 and cheese are spoken of by the old Greek writers from the 

 time of Homer, but not butter. Hippocrates, in the fifth cen- 

 tury before Christ, is the first Grecian writer who mentions 

 it, referring its origin to the Scythians. Herodotus, the father 

 of history, in the same century, describes the process of mak- 

 ing it among the same people. The Scythians probably 

 owed the discovery to accident. The milk, which in their fre- 

 quent wanderings they took with them in skins, would, by 

 agitation, exhibit particles of butter, and this suggested the 

 process of churning, a process originally rude and simple. 



Butter was very little known, however, either among the 

 Greeks or Romans, till a comparatively late period. The first 

 recommendation of it, as an article of food, is by Dioscorides, a 

 little before the time of Christ. He mentions its medicinal or 

 healing virtues, on Avhich Galen, who wrote two hundred years 

 later, is more full. Galen affirms that he had seen it made of 

 cow's milk, though Dioscorides makes mention only of sheep and 

 goat's milk. Pliny ascribes its invention to the " barbarous 

 nations," that is, as he generally uses the term, the ancient 

 Germans and Britons ; and says, that it was made from the 

 milk of the sheep, the goat, and the cow. 



Still it was little, if at all, used as an article of food, the rec- 

 ommendation of Dioscorides notwithstanding. It was used in 

 medicine, and as an ointment in baths, and sometimes, as among 

 the Egyptian Christians, was burned in lamps instead of oil. 

 In the ancient Roman Catholic churches its use in lamps was 

 sometimes permitted, when oil failed. The ancient butter, 

 however, appears to have been a very inferior article ; it was not 

 solid, or concrete, like ours, but liquid, and is always referred 

 to as poured out, and not cut. 



Butter is mostly used in the more northerly countries of Eu- 

 rope. In the southern, where olive-groves abound, its use is, 

 in a great measure, superseded by that of oil. 



The making of good butter is an art. Its good or bad quality 

 is sometimes attributed to food or pasturage ; and this has an 

 effect, no doubt. Certain it is, that particular plants fed upon 

 by cattle, impart a flavor, sometimes disagreeable, to butter. 

 But more, we believe it is now admitted, depends on the making. 



