184 



THE LANCASTER FARMEI^. 



i December, 



product is made surreptitiously by infringers 

 upon the patent, of whicti we are the owners, and 

 that the quality of their article is often exceed- 

 ingly inferior, owing to their avarice, their un- 

 cleauliness, or their departure (ignorantly or 

 other wise) from the conditions that are essential 

 to the production of a good food-product. Of 

 course we bring suit against infringers wher- 

 ever we find them and can secure sufficient 

 evidence that they are intruding upon our 

 rights. 



It may interest you and the young gentle- 

 men composing your class to have the history 

 of the invention of this new food-product, 

 and some general account of the methods 

 pursued in its manufacture; and though my 

 time is much absorbed otherwise, I have pre- 

 pared the following brief outline sketch on 

 the subject for your information: 



For several years, prior to the year 1869, 

 M. Mege, who is an eminent French chemist, 

 had been employed by the French govern- 

 ment to prosecute inquiries looking to the 

 improvement in the manufacture and quality 

 of numerous common articles of domestic 

 food — such as bread and the like. The re- 

 sults of his inquiries, wnich were in the in- 

 terests of the working and the rural popula- 

 tion, were so marked and useful, that at the 

 instance of the Empress Eugenie he was in- 

 vited by the goveniment to institute further 

 investigations, having for their aim the pro- 

 duction of a fatty food suitable for taking the 

 place of ordinary butter, adapted for the use 

 of sailors on long voyages, and of the poorer 

 classes at home, which might be sold at a 

 much lower price than it, and be capable of 

 longer preservation. 



In response to this invitation, M. Mege 

 made a series of elaborate experiments with 

 cattle, on the government farm at Versailles, 

 the object of which was to ascertain from 

 whence the buttery particles in the milk of 

 cows was derived ; and the conclusion he 

 finally reached was, that it was produced 

 from the fat of the animal by being reab- 

 sorbed and carried into the circulation, and 

 being deprived of its stearine by respiratory 

 combustion, it furnished its butter solids to 

 the udders, where, mider the influence of the 

 mammary pepsin, it was changed into glob- 

 ules of butter. Following his investigations 

 still further, and carefully noting and copy- 

 ing the operations of nature in the living 

 animal, M. Mege finally brought to light the 

 hitherto undiscovered secret that the pure 

 fat of slaughtered animals, melted at about 

 the temperature of the natural heat of the 

 body, say from 103° to 125" Fahrenheit, but 

 not in any case to exceed the latter maxi- 

 mum, when duly refined, separated from 

 albumen and membrane, and relieved of its 

 stearine, is absolutely free from disagreeable or 

 tallnwy odor and taste, is made capable of 

 ■prolonged preservation and is identical with the 

 butter glohrdes in the milk of cows. He also 

 ascertained that to raise the temperature in 

 melting above 125° would be destructive of 

 all these results, imparting to the fat by the 

 decomposition of the membrane, fibre, etc., 

 through the agency of a high degree of heat, 

 a disagreeable taste and odor, impairing its 

 capacity for preseiTation and rendering it un- 

 fit for use as an article of food. 



M. Mege's next practical step was to churn 

 this pure oil — popularly known as oleomargar- 

 ine — with water, a small quantity of milk, or 

 the curds of milk, and a suitable quantity of 

 common salt of soda. The result was a pro- 

 duct which, when worked in the same man- 

 ner as ordinary butter, is in almost every 

 respect identical with it, having the same 

 chemical constituents existing in almost the 

 same proportions, and when carefully made 

 being indistinguishable from it in consistence, 

 taste and odor. 



Having given you this historical outline of 

 the invention, I will now present to your 

 notice the methods pursued in the manufac- 

 ture of the product, and I think it will serve 

 to satisfy any reasonable inquirer that the 

 prejudice is utterly unfounded which has been 

 sought to be created against artificial butter, 



on the ground that it is made from soapfat, 

 from disgusting grease, collected from kitchens 

 and gutters, or from the decomposed fat of 

 animals, diseased or otherwise, in which filth 

 and ordure were present. These are some of 

 the baseless charges which have been coined 

 and diligently circulated by interested parties, 

 who are apprehensive that the Mege patent 

 will supply a formidable competitor for the 

 favor of consumers of butter. How baseless 

 these charges are will appear from the follow- 

 ing relation of the process pursued by one of 

 the largest manufactories of this new and im- 

 portant food product, under a license I'rom 

 our company : 



The caul fat of freshly slaughtered animals 

 is brought from the large abattoirs in New 

 York and its vicinity, daily from 3 or 4 

 o'clock p. m. till midnight, in amounts vary- 

 ing from 30,000 to 100,000 pounds per day. 

 As it arrives it is inspected, and any green or 

 decomposed fat rejected. It is then placed in 

 large vats through which a constant stream 

 of cold water is passing, by which means the 

 animal heat is extracted from the fat, and it 

 is cleansed of all foreign matter — blood, albu- 

 men, ordure, dirt, etc. When this is com- 

 pleted, the fat is cut into pieces of from four 

 to ten pounds weight and placed in similar 

 tanks through which a constant stream of 

 tepid water is passing, where its cleansing 

 and purification are finally completed. AVhen 

 it has been thus thoroughly cleansed it is fed 

 into hashers driven by steam, such as are 

 used in making sausage meat, out of which 

 it passes, completely minced and disinte- 

 grated, into a series of jacketed-kettles — 

 wster-baths, the water of which is raised 

 to a temperature not to exceed 12.5°F. In 

 these kettles the fat is gradually melted, 

 being constantly stirred the while, until 

 the membrane, animal fiber, etc., are entirely 

 separated and have sunk to the bottom in the 

 form of scrap, leave a limpid refined fat super- 

 natant. This supernatant fat, which consists 

 of pure oil suitable for conversion into butter, 

 and stearine, is then drawn off into large ves- 

 sels and placed in what is technically kndwn 

 as "the seeding room, " where a curious and 

 interesting process takes place — the stearine 

 gradually forming in spongy flocculae through- 

 out the mass, until in about twenty-four hours 

 it is all crystallized and becomes distinct from 

 the oil in wliich it is immersed. When this 

 crystallization is complete the mass is allowed 

 to solidify, when it is packed in small cotton 

 bags and subjected to pressure an atmosphere 

 of about 80° F. the pure oil oozing out in a 

 golden stream and the stearine being left in 

 the bags. The oil thus expressed is a beauti- 

 ful limpid translucent fluid at the temperature 

 of 80°— congealing at a lower temperature — 

 is free alike from membrance, stearine taste 

 and odor, dissolves in the mouth quickly, 

 leaving no trace of stearine adhering to the 

 teeth or gums, and is ready to be converted 

 into butter. 



In another part of the factory, faultless in 

 its arrangement and in its sweetness and 

 cleanliness, there are huge chums run by 

 steam, tables for working the butter and all 

 the appliances of a well-ordered butter dairy; 

 and here the oil whose process of manufac- 

 ture we have witnessed is converted into rich 

 yellow and creamy butter. 



Trusting that you will find ray long com- 

 munication of interest to yourself and the 

 young gentlemen under your care. — / am 

 yours respectfully, M. D. Deshler, President of 

 the United States Dairy Company. 



THE OMNIVOROUS CATERPILLAR. 



"All owners of trees should take advan- 

 tage of the present season to apply the pre- 

 vention, or means of destruction of the 

 caterpillar, recently so successfully introduced 

 in European parks. The plan is simple, and 

 unattended with peril to the tree. Bore a 

 small gimlet hole into the trunk of the tree, 

 about a yard from the ground, penetrating to 

 the depth of one-third the diameter. Fill 

 this hole with flowers of sulphur, and then 

 plug the aperture with wood. The rising sap 



will carry the sulphureous impregnation to 

 the farthest extremity of every twig and leaf, 

 and no caterpillar, even of the most infernal 

 origin, can exist upon the tree." — American 

 paper. [Whether the above is much known 

 in England, or whether the writer merely as- 

 sumes that it is a European custom, in order 

 to give force to his assertion of the eflicacy of 

 his nostrum, we are not aware. Certainly, if 

 the caterpillar tribe can be thus easily ban- 

 ished from trees, the fact caimot be too widely 

 known.— Ed. J. F.] 



We find the foregoing in the Journal of 

 Forestry for the month of September of the 

 present year, a very clever English magazine, 

 published in London. We reproduce it in 

 order to illustrate the subterfuges which wri- 

 ters sometimes resort to, when they desire 

 tlieir statements to be credited by intelligent 

 paojile. 



The author of this pet remedy was no doubt 

 feeling for a foreign indorsement by quoting a 

 foreign precedent, but he gets it very fiiintly. 

 Twenty or thirty years ago, the sulphur theory 

 had a good many disciples in North America, 

 especially in Pennsylvania, not only as an 

 exterminator of cateipillars, but also of cur- 

 culios, tree-borers, and codlings, but latterly 

 it has become quite exploded. There were 

 occasional coincidences which gave the remedy 

 some color among those who were entirely 

 ignorant of the economies of insects and their 

 transformations. We may instance the case 

 of Mr. Jones, who witnessed the foliage of a , 

 favorite young walnut tree rapidly disappear- 

 ing under the attacks of a multitude of black 

 caterpillars (the larvse of " Datana minis- 

 tra.") and forthwith he bored the hole and 

 applied the sulphur. Within twelve hours 

 thereafter every caterpillar disappeared, and 

 !Mi\ Jones was in ecstacies. The next year, 

 to his horror, Mr. Jones noticed the caterpil- 

 lars in increased numbers, and applied the 

 same "sulphureous" antidote, but the insects 

 ignored it altogether ; and, through their in- 

 creased numbers, and his unbounded faith in 

 his remedy, they stripped every leaf ofi" the 

 tree, and then abandoned it for a more luxu- 

 riant feeding ground. 



Now, the reason for all this is very simple, 

 but the Joneses of society "won't see it." 

 The caterpillars of this insect (a "walnut 

 moth,") when they are fully developed, leave 

 the tree and go into the ground, or spin a sort 

 of loose cocoon among the rubbish on the 

 ground, as the case may be, for when the sea- 

 son is favorable they produce two broods ; 

 hence, when Jones applied the sulphur in the 

 first instance, it was about the transforming 

 period, and they deserted the tree in obedi- 

 ence to their natural instinct, and the sulphur 

 had nothing at all to do with it. In the 

 second instance, they were not ready to leave, 

 and they didn't, sulphur, or anything else 

 plugged up in the trunk of the tree to the 

 contrary notwithstanding. 



Now, there is something very peculiar in 

 the constitution of some human minds, which 

 leads them to place more confidence in one 

 apparent success of this kind than they would 

 of distrust in a dozen of failures. Any per- 

 son who has ever attempted to mix flowers of 

 sulphur and an aqueous fluid, must have ex- 

 perienced the ditticulty, even after long and 

 violent agitation, and where it is plugged up 

 in a gimlet hole, the difficulty of its being 

 taken up by the sap, becomes still more appa- 

 rent—indeed, although very fusible, it is abso- 

 lutely insoluble in water, and if it were not, 

 it would be quite as obnoxious to the life of 

 the tree itself as to the caterpillar. 



Of course, if there are any believers in the 

 sulphur remedy, it is not our purpose to dis- 

 turb them in it ; but it appears to us that if 

 there was any virtue in it— so cheap and 

 simple is it in its application— we siiould not 

 now hear so many complaints about cater- 

 pillars, tree-borers, curculios, codlings and the 

 many other insects that infest trees and shrub- 

 bery. Moreover, can any one doubt that if 

 " the rising sap will carry the sulphureous 

 impregnation to the farthest extremity of 

 every twig and leaf," it would not also carry 



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