BUSH-HARROWING. 



BUTTER. 



it moves ; sometimes, however, wheels are not importance to farmers who have a large stoc,f 

 employed, but the whole rough surface is ap- of cattle. (Trans. Bath and West of England 

 plied to, and dragged on, the ground. See Society, vol. iii.) 



HARROW. BUTT. A provincial term applied to such 



BUSH-HARROWING. The operation of j ridges or portions of arable land as run out 

 harrowing with an instrument of the kind just short at the sides or other parts of fields; also 

 described. It is chiefly necessary on grass- ' to a vessel holding 126 gallons of wine, 108 of 

 lands, or such as have been long in pasture, for ; beer ; and to a measure of from 15 to 22 cwts. 



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 beinu' 

 into the ground, or for removing the worm- 

 matter that may have formed 

 on the surface. 



131 SH-VETCH (JVm *r;m//). A plant of 

 the vetch kind, which may probably be culti- 

 vated to advantage by the farmer, where lu- 

 cern.' :ind other plants of a similar nature 

 cannot be irrown. Its root is perennial, fibrous, 

 and hr.-inching; the stalks many, ^>iue of them 

 shooting immediately upwards, others creep- 

 nni'rcr the surface of the ground, and 



ig, some near to, and others a 

 siderable distance from, the parent-stock. The 

 small oval leaves are connected toother by a 

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

 i arc in shape like those of the common 



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



i usually come in pairs afteru 

 the number of four at a joint; the pods are 

 much shorter than those of the commo: 



'i proporttafe to their length, and flatter, 

 and an'oi'a Mark colour when rip*-; tb 



iller than those of the cultivated sp,-- 



-^peckled, others ,,f a <-l. ( \ 



It yields, from a brown sandy loam, 17,6M Ibs. 

 per acre of grass, and of nutritive matter 976 

 Ibs. Ir in the middle of May, and 



maintains its place when once in po- 

 of the soil, but appears unlit for 

 The seeds are sown in April or the beginning 

 :<. 210.) B-ing a 

 perennial plant, Mr. s 



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 in 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 



of currants. To bull, from Dutch bottcn, to 

 strike. Hun-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, s 



HITTER (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. Alton (<)nnrt. Junrn. Jlgr. vol. 

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

 until they were taught by the Germans h,>w to 

 make it. and it wa> not used by them as food, 

 but merely as oil." Herodotus says, that the 

 Sevthians formed butter by agitating mare'? 

 milk; and the poet Anaxandrides says, that the 

 Thracians ate butter, at which the Grecians 

 were surprised. When Julius Orvsar invaded 

 Knu'la-id, 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 (Jbrefcfton&'l VV/nv/.s in Xtibin, 

 p. 441), are very laru'e con-nmers of fresh 

 butter, and they are in the habit of drinking 

 every morning a cupful of melted butter, or 

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

 is made from the milk of the buffalo, and a 

 nsiderable traffic is carried on with it. 

 nally 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 cheesy part is 

 separated from the whey or serum. Cream of 



239 



