BUSH-HARROWING. 



BUTTER, 



it moves ; sometimes, however, wheels are not 

 employed, but the whole rough surface is ap- 

 plied to, and dragged on, the ground. See 

 HARROW. 



BUSH-HARROWING. The operation of 

 harrowing with an instrument of the kind just 

 described. It is chiefly necessary on grass- 

 lands, or such as have been long in pasture, for 

 the purpose of breaking down and reducing 

 the lumps and clods of the earth or manures 

 that may have been applied, and thereby ren- 

 dering them more capable of being washed 

 into the ground, or for removing the worm- 

 casts and mossy matter that may have formed 

 on the surface. 



BUSH -VETCH (Vicia sepium}. A plant of 

 the vetch kind, which may probably be culti- 

 vated to advantage by the farmer, where lu- 

 cerne and other plants of a similar nature 

 cannot be grown. Its root is perennial, fibrous, 

 and branching ; the stalks many, some of them 

 shooting immediately upwards, others creep- 

 ing just under the surface of the ground, and 

 emerging, some near to, and others at a con- 

 siderable distance from, the parent-stock. The 

 small oval leaves are connected together by a 

 inid-rib, with a tendril at the extremity ; the 

 flowers are in shape like those of the common 

 vetch, of a reddish-purple colour; the first that 

 blossom usually come in pairs, afterwards to 

 the number of four at a joint; the pods are 

 much shorter than those of the common vetch, 

 larger in proportion to their length, and flatter, 

 and are of a black colour when ripe ; the seeds 

 are smaller than those of the cultivated spe- 

 cies, some speckled, others of a clay colour. 

 It yields, from a brown sandy loam, 17,696 Ibs. 

 per acre of grass, and of nutritive matter 976 

 Ibs. It flowers in the middle of May, and 

 maintains its place when once in possession 

 of the soil, but appears unfit for clayey soils. 

 The seeds are sown in April or the beginning 

 of May. (Hart. Gram. Wob. p. 210.) Being a 

 perennial plant, Mr. Swayne deems it to be a 

 proper kind to intermix with grass seeds for 

 laying down lands intended for pasture ; and 

 that it is as justly entitled to this epithet as 

 any herbaceous plant whatever, having ob- 

 served a patch of it growing in one particular 

 spot of his orchard for fourteen or fifteen 

 years past. It is not only a perennial, but an 

 evergreen : it shoots the earliest ia the spring 

 of any plant eaten by cattle with which he is 

 acquainted ; vegetates late in autumn, and 

 continues green through the winter, though the 

 weather be very severe : add to this, that cat- 

 tle are remarkably fond of it. The chief rea- 

 son that has hitherto prevented its cultivation 

 has been the very great difficulty of procuring 

 good seed in any quantity. The pods, he finds, 

 do not ripen altogether; but as soon almost 

 as they are ripe, they burst with great elasticity, 

 and scatter the seed around; and after the 

 seeds have been procured, scarce one-third 

 part of them will vegetate, owing, as he sup- 

 poses, to an internal defect, occasioned by cer- 

 tain insects making them the nests and food 

 for their young. It seems, also, that a crop of 

 this kind of vetch may be cut three or four 

 times, and in some cases even so early as the 

 beginning of March a circumstance of much 



i importance to farmers who have a large stock 

 | of cattle. (Trans. Lath and West of England 

 Society, vol. iii.) 



BUTT. A provincial term applied to such 

 ridges or portions of arable land as run out 

 , short at the sides or other parts of fields ; also 

 ' to a vessel holding 126 gallons of wine, 108 of 

 beer; and to a measure of from 15 to 22 cwts. 

 of currants* To butt, from Dutch botten, to 

 strike. Butt-land is the place where, in days 

 of archery, the butts for practice were placed. 

 It is also applied provincially to a close- 

 bodied cart : hence a dung-butt, or wheel- 

 cart, gurry-butt, or sledge-cart, ox-butt, horse* 

 butt, &c. 



BUTTER (Ger. butter; But. boter). A well- 

 known article of domestic consumption, com- 

 monly procured by churning the milk of the 

 cow. It was not an article employed by the 

 early Greeks and Romans. " The ancient Ro- 

 mans," says Mr. Aiton (Quart. Journ. dgr. vol. 

 v. p. 357), "knew nothing of making butter 

 until they were taught by the Germans how to 

 make it, and it was not used by them as food, 

 but merely as oil." Herodotus says, that the 

 Scythians formed butter by agitating mare's 

 milk; and the poet Anaxandrides says, that the 

 Thracians ate butter, at which the Grecians 

 were surprised. When Julius Caesar invaded 

 England, he found that the inhabitants had 

 abundance of milk, from which they made 

 butter, but could not make cheese till they 

 were taught that art by their invaders. The 

 Arabs, it seems (BurckhardCs Travels in Nubia, 

 p. 441), are very large consumers of fresh 

 butter, and they are in the. habit of drinking 

 every morning a cupful of melted butter, or 

 ghee, as it is called in the East. In India, ghee 

 is made from the milk of the buffalo, and a 

 very considerable traffic is carried on with it. 

 It is usually conveyed in leather bottles or 

 duppers, holding from ten to forty gallons; 

 some are made of hide. The colour of butter 

 is yellow ; it possesses the property of an oil, 

 and mixes readily with other oily bodies; it 

 melts and becomes transparent at 96 Fahren- 

 heit, and if it is kept in this state for some time, 

 it assumes exactly the appearance of oil, loses 

 its peculiar flavour, and some curds and whey 

 separate from it Milk, in fact, is composed 

 of cream, curd, and whey. The cream and 

 the milk are merely united mechanically, and 

 when, therefore, the new milk is allowed to 

 rest, the cream, being the lighter of the two, 

 rises gradually to the top ; the curd separates 

 from the milk, too, with the assistance of a 

 very slight degree of acidity. Butter may be 

 made by the agitation of either cream or new 

 milk: fresh cream is not commonly used, be- 

 cause it requires four times the churning that 

 stale cream does. (Fourcroy, Ann. de Chem. 

 torn. vii. p. 169.) The contact of the atmo- 

 spheric air is not absolutely essential to the 

 production of butter from cream, although 

 the oxygen of the air is usually absorbed in 

 churning: according to Dr. Young, there is 

 an increase in the temperature during the ope- 

 ration of four degrees. Buttermilk is merely 

 milk deprived of its cream, in which it rapidly 

 becomes sour, and the curdy or cJieesy part is 

 separated from the whey or serum. Cream of 



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