ILLINOIS STATE DAIRtMEN^S ASSOCIATIOlSr. 87 



iilust be well made. I shall not stop to define this term well made ; every 

 dairyman before me understands it, and dairywoman too. 



Second, it should be salted with pure salt. Prof. Arnold— my friend Mr. 

 Wanzer and others here may not appreciate the authority— tells us in one 

 of his published articles that salt is only added to butter because it better 

 suits our taste ; that it performs no office in preserving the butter, except as 

 the brine formed by the salt helps to carry off its impurities ; but that the 

 impurities of impure salt help to decompose the cassine and other foreign 

 iubstances, some little of which is left in our very best butter, and thus 

 instead of preserving the butter, helps to destroy it. I do believe this mat- 

 ter of pure salt is of vital importance to the butter maker, and more partic- 

 ularly if the butter is not to go into early consumption. 



Having made the butter well, and salted with pure salt, the third essential 

 is to so pack it as to entirely exclude the air. Chemists tell us that ferment- 

 ation can not go on without air, hence the importance of so packing as to 

 entirely exclude it. Our common butter-tubs will not do this ; worm-eaten 

 firkins will not do it; even the best firkins made will not do it perfectly. 



Ferments go on more or less rapidly according to the temperature. The 

 higher the temperature (up to a certain point) the more rapid the ferment, 

 and the lower the more the ferment is retarded, down to near 32*^, where it 

 ceases entirely. I consider, therefore, the fourth essential point in preserv- 

 ing summer butter for winter use, to be, it must be kept at a low temperature. 



I had a theory that if butter was put up in packages perfectly air- 

 tight, it would keep, regardless of temperature, and I tried a little experi- 

 ment the past summer to test this theory. I had two small tin cans made. 

 The first week in July I filled them and sealed them with wax, I think air- 

 tight. I purposely kept them through the summer at a temperature of 70'' 

 and over. I opened them two weeks ago and found them utterly spoiled for 

 table butter, and I might almost say for any culinary use whatever. I^ow 

 one of two things is true— my theory was fallacious or the cans were not 

 air-tight, and I am now satisfied that the theory was not correct. 



In preserving fruits, meats, vegetables, etc., by the canning process, we 

 destroy all the spores (the active principle in fermentation) by heat. Not so 

 in packing butter ; they remain in the butter, and there is also air enough 

 in the butter to carry on fermentation if the temperature be high. 



We can secure a low temperature in our hot summer climate only by the 

 use of ice. In Chicago and other cities they build immense refrigerators for 

 the preservation of meats, fruits, etc., and the advertisements sent thiough 

 the country by parties interested tell wondrous stories of their preserving 

 qualities. I condense an item or two I gathered from the New York Inde- 

 pendent of three or four weeks ago, which although not so remarkable as, 

 some of the statements we find in the advertising circulars we meet, (sub- 

 scribed and sworn to) nevertheless will answer our purpose if they are true : 



A Mr. Robinson, a dealer in eggs and poultry at an interior village in 

 New York, has erectad an immense refrigerator for the preservation of the 

 articles in which he deals. It is an immense ice-house with the ice stored 



