BUTTER 



1018 



BUTTER 



power is furnished Butte by the Great Falls 

 of the Missouri River, 130 miles distant, Can- 

 yon Ferry, Madison Valley and Big Hole, and 

 it is used by the railroads, the mines and the 

 city. As a result, smoke is practically elim- 

 inated from the district. 



The National Parks Highway connects Butte 

 with the Glacier National Park to the north, 

 and Yellowstone National Park, to the south, 

 is reached over the Montana-Utah Highway. 

 "Butte" generally designates a much larger 

 district than the city itself, and includes five 

 smaller towns. The city covers an area of more 

 than five square miles. During the ten years 

 preceding 1900 the population increased 184.2 

 per cent. In 1910, including the suburban 

 towns, it had reached 60,000, and in 1914 it was 

 more than 80,000. Although Americans pre- 

 dominate, practically every foreign country is 

 represented, Ireland by the greatest number. 



Butte adds to the natural advantages of 

 climate and mineral and agricultural wealth 

 every convenience of a modern city. The 

 water supply is brought from the mountains at 

 an original cost of $4,000,000. The handsome 

 public buildings include the Federal building, 

 library, Masonic Temple, theaters, schools, 

 churches, banks and hospitals. Near the city 

 are a number of pleasure resorts easily reached 

 by electric cars. The Columbia Gardens, 

 owned and operated by ex-Senator William A. 

 Clark, is one of the most popular parks. The 

 Montana State School of Mines, located at 

 Butte, has an attendance of about 100. This 

 school offers advantages to students of en- 

 gineering. Besides its vast mining activities, 

 Butte operates extensive planing mills, tile 

 factories, iron-works and machine shops. 



History. After the gold rush to California, 

 prospectors combed the hills far and near for 

 rich ores. A few placer miners panned gold 

 from Silver Bow Creek, which runs through 

 the city of Butte, as early as 1864. A town site 

 was laid out in 1867 and incorporated in 1876. 

 All provisions came to the camp by ox carts 

 until the completion of the Northern Pacific 

 Railroad in 1883. About that time rich copper 

 deposits were discovered and the life of the 

 city assured. 



BUT'TER, an important dairy product 

 made from the fat of milk, known to man for 

 nearly 4,000 years and now one of the most 

 extensively-used foods in temperate regions. 

 It has been said that "bread is the staff of 

 life, but bread and butter is a gold-headed 

 cane." 



Butter was formerly made from the milk of 

 goats and sheep, but the market product that 

 has so many familiar uses in the modern 

 household is made only from the milk of cows. 

 Fat occurs in milk in the form of tiny globe- 

 like particles. Formerly it was supposed that 

 each particle was enclosed in a thin skin, or 

 membrane, but this belief is no longer held 

 by scientists, for several reasons. One of these 

 is that by violent agitation of hot milk with 

 an egg beater the fat globules may be divided 

 into smaller ones, and the milk is still normal 

 in appearance. Were each globule surrounded 

 by a membrane this would not be the case. 

 When milk is shaken about, or churned, the 

 liquid globules are solidified and the fat par- 

 ticles cling together, forming the compact mass 

 known as butter. 



At least twenty centuries before the Chris- 

 tian Era men made butter by churning milk in 

 skin bags, but in that period it was semi- 

 liquid in form and was always spoken of as 

 being "poured out." Butter was valued by the 

 ancients as a medicine, and as an ointment 

 which they rubbed on the body after bathing, 

 and it was burned in lamps as we now burn 

 oil, but it seems to have been used as a food 

 only to a slight extent. Even at the present 

 time the people of Southern Europe prefer 

 olive oil to butter as a food. 



It is said that the Arabs' learned how to make 

 butter by accident. They put milk in skin 

 bags, which were carried across the deserts on 

 the backs of camels, and the jolting of their 

 burden during the journey caused the milk 

 to be churned into a butter mass. In India, 

 where on account of the climate it is difficult 

 to keep food sweet for any length of time, 

 the natives make fresh butter every day by 

 shaking milk in bottles. 



The Modern Method of Making Butter. The 

 butter made according to these crude methods 

 is, of course, inferior to the product of the 

 modern creamery or dairy farm. The chief 

 processes in butter making of the present day 

 are creaming, or separating, ripening, churning 

 and working. 



Separating. Though butter is sometimes 

 made from fresh milk, ordinarily only the 

 cream is used. Cream is a thick, oily substance 

 composed of the globes of fat that rise and 

 gather on the surface of milk. There are two 

 general methods of separating the cream from 

 milk the gravity and the centrifugal method. 

 The gravity method consists in setting the milk 

 in a cool place in shallow pans, or putting it 



