ANIMALS AND THEIR PRODUCTS. 141 



254. For a succession of 3-ears, I have seen store- 

 butter, of not much more than a medium quality, se- 

 lected and put down in June ; and yet in every case, 

 when not put in stone pots, it has turned out in the 

 following winter such that no gentleman would be 

 afraid to eat it, nor ashamed to offer it to his friends, 

 nor would be willing to deduct more than one^ cent a 

 pound, if he were to carry it to market, from the high- 

 est price of fresh butter. 



255. The cellar in which these experiments have 

 been made is spacious, airy, cooler than most cellars, 

 but rather damp. Its dampness may have been the 

 reason of the failure in every attempt to preserve but- 

 ter in earthen pots, while every trial with wood firkins 

 has succeeded admirably, the butter in every trial, not 

 less than ten in all, coming out seemingly quite as 

 good in the winter as it went in the preceding sum- 

 mer. I will therefore state, that, in a dryer atmo- 

 sphere, possibly stone pots may answer a better pur- 

 pose than I have laid down. My own experience, 

 whether in preserving butter at home, or in buying 

 that preserved by others, has, in every instance, been 

 against the use of stone pots. 



CHEESE. 



256. It has been stated that about 4 per cent, of 

 milk is sugar. Now if milk be kept some time in 

 a warm place, the cascine, or curd, acts upon the su- 

 gar, and changes a portion of it into a peculiar acid, 

 called kijfic and. 



