THE OX. 
33 
THE DAIRY. 
vant. And they said, So do as thou hast said. And Abraham hastened into the tent unto Sarah, and said, Make ready quickly 
three measures of fine meal, knead it, and make cakes upon the hearth. And Abraham ran unto the herd, and fetched a calf 
tender and good, and gave it unto a young man ; and he hasted to dress it. And he took Butter and Milk, and the calf which he 
had dressed, and set it before them; and he stood by them under the tree, and they did eat.” The scene, apart from the mission 
of the heavenly guests, might represent the hospitality of the wandering Syrians at the present hour : and all over the East, from 
Aleppo to the Ganges, the milk of flocks and herds supplies to the inhabitants a mild and grateful food. 
The earliest writers of Greece and Rome speak of cheese and milk as a food familiar to every one. In the fatal cave of the Cyclops, 
Ulysses finds the milk of Goats and Sheep stored in baskets of osier, the shelves bending under loads of cheeses; and innu¬ 
merable other allusions to this early food of mankind are scattered through the writings of the poets, philosophers, and historians 
of Greece. But the Greeks, living in the country of the olive, made no use of butter, and became only acquainted with it from 
those whom, in the arrogance of their hearts, they chose to style barbarians. Aristotle says of milk, that it consists of two parts, 
the cheesy and the watery; and it is only in another place that he refers, incidentally as it were, to the oily matter which rises to 
the surface. Hippocrates, who wrote in the fifth century before Christ, speaking of the Scythians, says, that they poured the 
milk of their mares into wooden vessels, and agitated it violently, which caused the fat part, which was light, to rise to the sur¬ 
face, becoming what they called butter ; and Herodotus, who was contemporary with him, mentions, that they placed the milk in 
deep wooden vessels, and caused it to be agitated by their slaves. Both writers manifestly speak of something which was new to their 
own customs; and for many centuries afterwards we know that the Greeks made use of cheese and oil, but not of butter. Dios- 
corides, who wrote thirty-one years before Christ, seems to have been the first of the Greeks who suggested to his countrymen 
that this food of the barbarians might be used for diet. He says, that it might be melted, and poured over pulse and other vege¬ 
tables instead of oil; but ages elapsed before the Greeks adopted the customs, in this respect, of the nations they despised. 
The Romans in like manner, although they made large use of cheese, were ignorant of the use of butter, until they had 
extended their conquests amongst the Gauls, Germans, and Britons ; and it was not until the age of the empire that they began 
to make use of it as an ointment in their baths, and ultimately as food. They lived in the land of the olive and the vine ; and 
their rustic writers, while they treat largely of milk, cheese, and oil, say nothing of the preparation of butter. On the other hand, 
we learn from many of their writers that it was familiar to the Gothic and Celtic nations of Northern Europe. Pliny affirms that 
the barbarous nations made not only cheese but butter, which they used as an agreeable food. He says, that they made it from 
the milk of the Goat, the Sheep, and the Cow ; but most commonly from that of the Cow, although the milk of the Ewe produced 
the fattest butter. He describes the form of the vessel employed in making it, which seems to have been similar to that now in use. 
The northern nations were likewise acquainted with the use of cheese, although some of the Roman writers declare that they 
knew not how to prepare it, which can only mean, that they did not do so after the Roman fashion; for Pliny himself, who 
denies this knowledge to the Germans, describes their manner of making cheese by rendering the milk sour and pressing the whey 
from the curd. Caesar says of the same people, that the greater part of their food consisted of milk, cheese, and flesh. Strabo 
confirms the testimony of CAESAR, and Tacitus states that the food of the Germans was of the simplest kind, namely, wild fruits, 
game recently killed, or concrete milk, which must mean milk rendered concrete by curdling it. Of the Britons Gesar observes, 
that those of the interior for the most part did not sow corn, but lived on milk and flesh. And Strabo states, that some of them, 
though they had abundance of milk, were so ignorant as not to know how to make cheese. But if some of them only were thus 
ignorant, the rest must have possessed the knowledge; and we learn from other sources that the Celtee of the wilds of Britain, 
where the Roman arms never reached, were familiar with this early food of the people of the East. They had learned to prepare 
it, it may be believed, before Romulus drew milk from the teats of his wolf, or before the city of the Seven Hills had a name. 
All the ruminating animals subjected to domestication yield milk to their protectors; and all the members of the great Cau¬ 
casian, and even the Ethiopian family of mankind, make use of it as food. It is obtained from the domestic Cow, the Asiatic and 
African Zebu, the Buffalo, the Yak, the Camel, the Goat, the Sheep, the Reindeer. It is yielded likewise by the Mare and the 
Ass. The milk of the ruminating tribes is the richest in cream and cheese, and that of the Equine family is the most abundant 
in saccharine principles, and approaches nearest to that of the human species. The milk of mares is used by the Kalmuks and 
other Eastern Asiatics. The Chinese, who are of the same family of mankind, make scarce any use of milk as food; and the 
red men of America, who are the nearest connected by their physiological characters with the Eastern Asiatics, manifest the like 
indifference to it, and until the present hour have not learned to tame the milk-bearing animals of their country, the Reindeer and 
the Musk Ox of their regions of snow, and the Bisons of their rich savannahs and boundless forests. Passing from Eastern Asia 
into its innumerable islands, we find that milk is scarcely at all used by the inhabitants. To the wretched Papuans of Borneo, 
New Guinea, and New Holland, apparently a distinct race of the family of mankind, this salutary food is unknown. 
I 
