Feb. 2, 1908.J THE TROPICAL 
AGRICULTURIST. 
535 
PBESH BUTTER FOR INDIA. 
[FROM OUR OAVN CORRESPONDENT.] 
A few j'ears ago, so few as to be well within 
the memory of the present generation of Anglo- 
Indians, the Government of India brought out a 
young Scandinavian to initiate the people of this 
country into the mysteries of butter-making. It 
was an experiment, like many an other, conceived 
in the vague hope that something useful might 
come of it, but with only an indefinite idea as 
to how this something was to be accomplisiied. 
That a large proportion cf the European inhabi- 
tants had from time immemorial been able to 
obtain only an oleagenous mess in place of butter, 
was the reason for attempting it, but very few 
looked upon it as anything else than a compara- 
tively harmless method of wasting public funds, 
Today, this experiment has become an estab- 
lished success. The young Scandinavian is the 
head of an industry which supplies well-to-do 
members of the European community in Calcutta 
and Simla with really first class butter, and Avhich 
is likely to considerably extend its operations 
in the near future. Uranches are being opened in 
Rangoon and in Darjeeling. Even Fort Sandeman, 
in the wilds of the distant frontier, is not too far 
away to share in the great boon of obtaining 
fresh butter. 
The achievement is so remarkable, and its success 
is so important to the health of the European 
in this country, that it is worth while to visit 
Aligarh, the headquarters of the industry, to 
see how it has been accomplished. On a bright 
morning last November, your correspondent hap- 
pened to be in the neighbourhood of the dairy. 
The latter is located in a big, substantially built 
enclosure standing in an open plain, some three 
miles from the civil stations. Around is a wide 
expanse of thin pasture broken with scrub and 
treef, the surface white and bare in patches where 
the soil is impregnated with "reh" salt, verdant in 
narrow belts where irrigation channels are situated, 
A wide gate, through which runs a light railway 
for conveying fodder, leads to a central building 
well separated from the sheds in which the cattle 
are stalled. This building is of solid masonry 
with great arched verandalis that make it delight- 
fully cool. Within it the whole of the processes of 
manufacture are carried on. 
The milk is brought in from the sheds, some of 
which are within the enclosure while others are 
located in neighbouring villages, and on arrival, 
goes at once into the separator. This separator is 
so small as to appear almost a toy. In reality, 
it can deal with the produce of five hundred milch 
kine daily. In appearance and size it is not unlike 
a tea-table with a kettle with two crooked spouts 
set on the top and various cogwheels below. On 
lifting the upper part of the kettle a humming- 
top like arrangement is disclosed within ; which 
spins with giody speed when the machinery is set 
in motion. The milk goen in above and is set 
whirring by the humming top. The heaviest con- 
stituents, which is the watery skim milk, iiies, by 
centrifugal action, to the circumference and pours 
in a continuous stream out of one of the spouts. 
The lightest constitutent, which is beautiful rich 
cream, takes on less of the centrifugal energy and 
gravithtes to the centre where it is drawn off 
through the second spout. Milk, warm from the 
buflalo, is thus s^parated and there is none of the 
delay and exposure, with the attendant risk of 
turning sour, whi;U awaits the time honoured 
68 
process of standing for the cream to rise. The 
separation process is also infinitely more complete, 
almost the whole, instead of only a pari, of the 
butter-making constituents, being turned to useful 
account. From the separator the cream goes 
straight into the churns, great barrels re- 
volving on axles, with wooden beaters ini^i'le, 
by which it is shaken and jarred into butter. 
From the churns the butter is mechanic- 
ally lifted to a round rotating wooden table, 
raised in the centre so as to be like a circular 
lectern and with a gutter around the edge. 
Here the great yellow mass is manipulated by 
the help of wooden spades and squeezed and 
washed. A wooden roller, thick at one end where 
the table is low and then at the other where the 
table rises into a pp-ak in the centre, is fixed so as 
to revolve as the table rotates. The butter passes 
under the roller which squeezes it flat. On emerg- 
ing it is turned and heaped by the use of the 
spades, water playing on it the while, so that 
before it has made the round and reached the 
roller again much of the butter-milk has been 
eliminated. The process is continued until the 
mass is completely consolidated. 
The next process is even more interesting. It 
consists in the digging out with wooden spades of 
equal sizea lumps and the weighing and wrapping 
of them in paper. L)p to this point the butter 
has not been touched by hand, but one thinks 
that this part of ths process is impossible with- 
out the aid of the fingers of the attendants. The 
operator stands, in big white apron, in front of 
the scales. In front of him is a small mountain 
of butter in either hand he has a small wooden 
spade. With lightening speed he transfers a 
lump to the scale?, thence it passes on and is 
folded into clean white paper. The slightest 
miscalculation in the size of the spadeful betakes 
means a portion to be added or subtracted at the 
weighing, but so skilful does the workman become 
that hardly a correction is necessary. The spade 
picks up the exact amount, be it a quarter of 
a pound or a pound, that goes into a packet. 
There is no halt in the process and a human 
finger never touches the butter. From the time 
the milk enters the separator, to the moment 
when the paper packets of golden butter leave the 
ice house for the train, the whole of the handling 
is mechanical, wooden spades being the sole 
instruments employed to aid the machines in 
their task. 
The milk used is that of buffaloes, and the only 
extraneous matter introduced, in the course of 
manufacture, is a microscopic amount of harmless 
vegetable essence which deepens the yellow of 
the pats. A cleaner, more wholesome, or speedier 
process it would be difficult to imagine. The 
rooms are cooled with ice, and the result of 
the care that is taken is that the butter can be 
conveyed immense distances by rail, without deteii- 
oration, even along routes where ice packing is 
impossible. 
Condensing engines where ice is manufactured 
in great solid slabs, are attached to the dairy. 
Other plant is in course of erection which will 
eventually enable the churns and separator to be 
driven by steam, instead, as at present, by 
manual labour. 
From the dairy the cattle sheds are easily 
reached. They are long, well elevated, and care- 
fully paved structures, the sides open to the sun- 
shine and the wind, the feeding troughs ample and 
convenient. Here one may see buffaloes that are £t 
