Proceedings of the Farmers' Club. 441 



mon use in tiie English dairy districts for many years, and formed of 

 a barrel made to rotate on a shaft passed obliquely through it. Also, 

 in the old Kendal churn, in which internal rotary beaters, working 

 on a horizontal axis, are used. The motion of a crank turned by 

 hand is not, however, as steady as the regular up and down move- 

 ment of the ordinary dash churn, which has the further advantage 

 of being more easily worked by ordinary churn powers than any 

 form of rotary churn. Indeed the common dash churn only re(iuires 

 to be provided with some common sense and efficient means of apply- 

 ing the atmospheric principle to be as near perfection as we are 

 likely to attain witli this class of apparatus. 



Working and C cuing Butter. 



Butter undoubtedly contains a small proportion of casein or 

 cheesy matter, of wliich nitrogen is a constituent, and the presence 

 of this nitrogenized matter is one of the great causes of the tend- 

 ency to rancidity. To obviate this tendency, recourse must be had 

 to a curing process, which forms the second step in the preparation of 

 the article for market, the first being the expulsion of the buttermilk 

 which, when the butter is taken from tlie churn, amounts to about 

 twenty per cent of its weight. Butter, in a pure condition, is com- 

 posed of two fatty substances known as margarine and oleine, and 

 these in their turn are made up of two acids, known respectively as 

 margaric acid and oleic acid, which are united with an organic base, 

 the complex scientific naine of which it is not necessary to mention 

 here. Now the oleic acid is capable of absorbing oxygen from the 

 air, and by this means forms very strong smelling compounds, 

 another cause of the rank smell in butter. The main cause, how- 

 ever, lies in the formation of butyric acid by the decomposition of 

 the casein embraced in the article as above mentioned. 



To speak to farmers of the necessity of cleanly washed apparatus, 

 and of a low temperature in working butter, is evidently superflu- 

 ous, for those who have neglected these prerequisites have been 

 taught by the penalty of soft and rancid butter that there is a 

 screw loose somewhere. Much more care than is ordinarily prac- 

 ticed, however, should be given to the manner of working butter. 

 It should be sliced and chopped as little as possible, for the friction 

 of the ladle in cutting tends to destroy the grain, the butter being- 

 converted from an aggregation of firm globules, simply adhering 

 together, into a mass of those crushed and merged into each other, 



