PROCEEDINGS OF THE FARMERS' CLUB. 135 



^leg., which was the proper temperature. He had himself com- 

 menced churning with the cream at 62 deg., and kept it at 62 

 deg., and yet after four hours of churning the butter had to be 

 strained out from the buttermilk. 



Mr, Gale said that just as good butter could be made in 

 August as in October, and can be made as well in the western 

 part of New York as anywhere else. The only difficulty is in 

 knowing how to do it. The true mode is, the moment the milk is 

 strained, to put it in a cool place properly ventilated, and to keep 

 it cool until it is to be churned, when it must be churned at the 

 proper temperature, 



Mr. Robinson said that the thermometer in the churn would 

 not suffice ,• there must be a thermometer in the dairy, and the 

 temperature there must be properl}^ regulated. Then, provided 

 always that the electrical condition of the atmosphere is right, 

 we may always make butter. But we all know that milk is 

 affected by a violent thunder storm, and we cannot be sure of 

 making butter unless we know that the electrical condition of 

 the atmosphere is right. 



Prof. Mapes suggested that it was not the electricity but the 

 difference of barometrical pressure consequent upon a thunder 

 shower which affected the milk by precipitating particles held in 

 mechanical suspension. Probably a milk room in the neighbor- 

 hood of Bull's Run on the day of the battle would have been 

 affected in the same way. We are apt to attribute effects to a 

 fact associated in some wa}" with the cause. For instance, Mr. 

 James G. King raised very large crops by the aid of galvanism, 

 placing wires at some depth below the surface of the soil and 

 connecting them with a battery. But he found that with the 

 same disintegration of the soil which was required to bury his 

 wnres, he could raise the same crops without the battery. 



Dr. Trimble said that the error probablj^ was, as suggested, in 

 not keeping the milk at a proper temperature before churning. 

 In the best dairies of Pennsylvania, which he had visited, the 

 dairy is built, over a spring of water at a temperature never vary- 

 ing in summer, and not far from 55 deg., and the pans are set in 

 this water. There is no difficulty there in churning, and they 

 consider this spring-house essential in making good butter. 



Mr. Carpenter said that dairymen from whom he received large 

 quantities of butter informed him that they never had a failure. 

 The milk is always the same, it is churned by the thermometer, 

 and the result is always the same. 



