ILLINOIS STATE DAIRYMEN'S ASSOCIATION. 225 



cream, in proportions which vary with different buttermakers, accord- 

 ing to experience, ranging from 2 to 10 per cent. 



There are at the present time a dozen or twenty different kinds O'f 

 commercial cuiltuTes upon the market in this country^ and' Eturope. They 

 are furnished in various fiorms, sometiimes as a miilk cuilture in bottles, 

 sometimes as bouillon coiltaiTes, s'ometimeg in the form- ofi a po'w'der, 

 sometimes in the form o'f a paste. In all cases, however, the culture as' 

 furniS'hed consists simply of great num'bers of oertai-n species' of bacteria 

 intermingled with some material which wiill give a little greater bulk. 

 It has been found extremely difficult by those who have preipareld thesei- 

 cultures to prepare them and distribute them in such a way as- to insur^- 

 thedr purity, and! many of the failures which have resulte'd, especiall/yi- 

 in the early years,, have come from the fact that the cultures' used haye 

 not been pure. 'But with experience it has become possible to avoid 

 the errors of early years,, and the cultures which aremow furnished are 

 'more uniformly) pure. It may be also stated that the price at which 

 these cultures are furnish eid has been constantly lowered, until now they 

 can be obtained by the buttermaker at a price so small as to be really 

 inappreciable in a general busines:? of buttermaking. 



THE USE OP PURE CULIURBS WITH PASTEURIZATION. 



When atte-ntion i& turned to experi'mental' tests which have been 

 carried on in Europe as to the comparative value O'f butter thus made 

 and butter made without the pure cultures, it ig O'bserved in the first 

 iplace that apparently the process in queis'tion does not produce butter 

 which is quite so gooki as the very best type of butter that is sometime'^ 

 produced in dairies that dto not use this process. In other words, best 

 quality of butter is aparently made without pasturization and pure cul- 

 tures. However, these exceptionally fine grades of butter are only rare- 

 ly found, the average butter being somewhat inferior. While, then, tjie 

 highest grade of butter is not improved, the general average of the but- 



