75 



the particular characteristics of the animals are blended into one. 

 The marketable value of different brands is maintained evidently 

 by the care in collection as well as in feeding and manipulation. 

 The Norman butter-buyer, sitting in the receipt of the pro- 

 duce of scores of small dairies handed to him on the market day, 

 selects with an instructed eye and creates half-a-dozen at least 

 of different value out of the many offered him. In our own county, 

 the produce of Mr. Bull, of Hurst, ranks special even among good 

 butters. 



The constituents of butter are fat, curd, and whey, with small 

 quantities of added salt. The amount of water should not exceed 

 seven or eiglit per cent. ; and the salt is excessive in fresh butter if 

 over two or three per cent. An excess of curd in butter produces 

 a flavour too much like cheese. I have had samples of butter show 

 an amount of water equal to eighteen per cent. ; the result, not only 

 of want of due pressing, but of positive addition as a make-weight. 

 And such butters would yield 70 instead of So per cent, of true 

 butter fat . I may, perhaps, allude to the singularly variable proportion 

 of butter in the milk of domestic animals ; but this must be taken 

 apart from the quantity yielded by each. The mare gives 90 grains 

 to the pint of milk ; the ass, 185 ; human, 266 ; cow, 320 ; sheep, 

 513; goat, 568; sow, 583. I am credibly informed that this countiy 

 consumes far more butter for each head of the population than any 

 other. Day by day the fixed habit of life requires that the pat or the 

 pound should find its place on our table — the weekly consumption 

 being equal to above five ounces for each individual. And it must be 

 borne in mind that there are at least four months in the year when 

 butter producing is infinitely below the butter demand. This used to 

 be met by the large store of preserved and salted butter ; but, alas ! 

 pleuro-pneumonia and rinderpest, with an increased daily demand, 

 have materially reduced this storing. Good salt butter rules high ; 

 Dorset is a hixury ; and fresh an absolute extravagance. Of late years 

 considerable exertions have been made by merchants to open fresh 

 sources of supply. They have sought for, and found, many such, 

 available only by those marvellous means of transport the age is 

 remarkable for, and by which one locality is made to supply the needs 

 of another. I am enabled, by the courtesy of a merchant, to illustrate 

 samples of butter from many parts, and it will be interesting to know 

 how far and wide the sources lie. We have butter from America, from 



