ANIMALS AND THEIR PRODUCTS. 135 



often, and thus bring all parts of it successively into 

 contact with the air. The oxygen of the air combines 

 with the curd, and renders those little sacks, into which 

 it is formed, brittle, so that they crack open, and let 

 out the enclosed globules of butter. These eome to- 

 gether, forming larger masses, until, if the churning 

 be continued long enough U gather the butter^ as it is 

 sometimes called, nearly the whole will be found in 

 one mass. The curd is now nearly separated. It is 

 floating in the buttermilk. The sugar of milk is dif- 

 fused through both the buttermilk and the butter, 

 giving a peculiar sweetness to the butter, and also to 

 the buttermilk, if the cream had not become too sour 

 before churning. This is an important consideration ; 

 for it is this sugar of milk that performs the double 

 office of giving to the butter a luscious flavor, and of 

 causing it to keep well. 



244. Washed butter may have a tolerable flavor at 

 first, for it will retain a part of the sugar of milk in 

 spite of bad management. But it will have given up 

 to the water too much of its sugar of milk to allow of 

 its keeping for any considerable time. Put down a 

 firkin of butter that has been washed, and another 

 precisely like it in every other respect, but which has 

 seen no water, let them be from the same churning, 

 be put into similar firkins, and kept in the same place, 

 and the unwashed will keep best for an absolute cer- 

 tainty. No more absurd practice ever came into 

 vogue than that of washing butter in floods of water. 

 There is some advantage in washing very rancid but- 

 ter, for some of its bad properties may be washed out 



