ARTIFICIAL BUTTER. 317 



annum. Knight's New American Mechanical Dictionary, Part I, $2. Profession- 

 al Papers of the Signal Service, viz: No. I, Total EcUpse of the Sun, July, 1878, 

 by Prof. Cleveland Abbe; No. II, Isothermical Lines of the United States, 187 1 

 to 1880, by Lieut. A. W. Greeley; No. Ill, Chronological List of Auroras from 

 .1870 to 1879, by Lieut. A. W. Greeley, U. S. A.; No. IV, Tornadoes of May 

 .29th and 30th, 1879, by John P. Finley, U. S. A.; No. V, Information Relative 

 to Construction and Maintenance of Time Balls, compiled by Winslow Upton ; 

 No. VI, Reduction of Air- Pressure to Sea Level at Elevated Stations West of the 

 Mississippi River, by Henry A. Hazen, A. M. The Palenque Tablet (Smithson- 

 ian contribution 331), by Dr. Chas. Rau. Report of the Chief Signal Officer, 

 U. S. A., 1879. The Isthmian Passage via the Tehuantepec Route, by L. U. 

 Reavis, with an Introductory Letter by Capt. Silas Bent. Proceedings of a Con- 

 -vention of Agriculturists, January 10 to 18, 1882, at Agricultural Department, 

 Washington, D. C. Proceedings of the Davenport Academy of Natural Sciences, 

 Vol. Ill, Part 2, 1882. Commercial Report of Consuls of the U. S. , No. 19, 

 May, 1S82. Bulletin of the Essex Institute, Vol, XIV, Nos. i, 2, 3, and 4, 5, 6. 

 Articles upon Anthropological subjects contributed to the Smithsonian Reports 

 from 1863 to 1877, by Chas. Rau, M. D. , ' 



Note. — Several of the above will be fully noticed hereafter. — [Ed. 



SCIENTIFIC MISCELLANY. 



ARTIFICIAL BUTTER. 



GEO. LANZENDOERFER. 



I noticed in your Saturday's edition an article about artificial butter. Allow 

 -me a few lines of explanation as a chemist and one who, in his native country, 

 has had frequent opportunities for an insight into the manufacture of artificial 

 butter. The idea of finding a cheap substitute for butter without reducing its 

 value as an article of food was started by Napoleon III, who intended in the first 

 plan to help the working classes of Paris, for even then the price of butter had 

 advanced two to four francs a pound. He invited Mege-Mouries, a chemist, to 

 make a trial, in that direction, who succeeded so well that in 1869 the first artifi- 

 cial butter factory was started at Poissy. The Franco-German war stopped oper- 

 ations for awhile, but in 1872 the Societe Anonyme d' Alimentation was started 

 with a capital of 800,000 francs, to take hold of Mr. Mege-Mouries' discoveries. 

 This concern started factories in Paris and Nancy, the former producing to-day 

 120,000 pounds of artificial butter daily. Other factories started in Munich, 

 Frankfort-on-the-Main, Dresden, Berlin, Vienna, etc. 



