138 ANIMALS AND THEIR PRODUCTS. 



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should cease at once, for whatever is taken out after 

 that is a dahiage and not a benefit to the butter. It 

 is not buttermilk, it is water, with a little salt and 

 sugar dissolved in it, and is an essential part of good 

 butter. 



249. I have used firkin-butter from Madison County, 

 N. Y., nearly a year old, which was as fragrant and as 

 sweet as new-made butter ; and, on examining it with 

 a microscope, I have found it full of exceedingly fine 

 globules of a transparent liquid. If rubbed with a 

 knife-blade, these would run together and form drops, 

 as limpid as spring-water. Could they have been 

 analyzed, I have no doubt they would have been 

 found to contain salt, water, and sugar, but no curd. 

 Had they contained the least curd, it would have 

 putrefied, and would have spread putridity, offensive 

 to taste and smell, throughout the mass. 



250. I have before stated that the nitrogenous sub- 

 stances, curd (caseine), gluten (as the tough, stringy 

 part of wheat-flour), and albumen (as in eggs), are 

 quick to putrefy, and that they always act, as yeast, 

 to spread putrefaction. It is on this principle that a 

 particle of curd in butter will create and spread putre- 

 faction all about it. The sugar of milk contained in 

 these transparent globules of liquid is conservative ; 

 the salt dissolved in them is conservative, if it be 

 really pure salt'; but the curd, if there be any, is des- 

 tructive. The true idea therefore of working out all 

 the buttermilk is, to work out all the curd, and there 

 to stop, and not go on and work out all the life and 



