40 Cattle Problems. 



up in nourishing the tissues of the cow. Chaveau says: 

 " Milk is a white fluid having a sweet taste, and composed 

 of an albuminous water containing caseine in solution, 

 milk-sugar, salts, and fatty matter in globules, — the butter." 

 This is doubtless a correct description. 



The ingredients of the milk are not, it seems, secreted, 

 or strained from the blood through membranes, but are 

 produced by transformation of other substances into those 

 composing the body of the liquid, — milk. Its liquid part, 

 constituting a very large percentage of its bulk, consists 

 chiefly of water containing albumen ; its caseine is formed 

 from blood iibrin ; starch supplies the sugar of milk; 

 while portions of the fats in milk are said, on high author- 

 ity,* to be derived from proteids, or albuminous sub- 

 stances ; and the butter globules, or in the globules — for 

 probably the pellicle of the globule is albuminous — is said 

 by Dr. Voelcker to "consist mainly of a mixture of sev- 

 eral fats, among which palmatin, a solid cyrstallizable sub- 

 stance, is the most important. Palmatin, with a litte 

 stearine, constitutes 68 per cent of pure butter. Mixed 

 with these solid fats is about 30 per cent of oleine, a liquid 

 fat, and two per cent of odoriferous oils." If the statement 

 of Foster,"!" that fatty food is not favorable to the forma- 

 tion of milk — and he is well qualified to form a correct 

 conclusion — be correct, some prevalent views will have to 

 be discarded. AVe are inclined to think his view, that the 

 fats in milk are formed from proteids, is correct ; because 

 the sugar and caseine of milk are produced by the trans- 

 formation of other substances, and why should not the fat 

 of milk, or certain parts of it, be. also produced by trans- 

 formation of other substances of the blood by solvent or 

 cellular action in the gland follicles? It is certain that 

 muscular substance is transformed into fat after it has be- 



*Fo8ter's Physiology. tSce Foster's Physiology, p. 301. 



