| the Hebrews. 
BUTTER. 
and milk, and the calf that had been dressed, to set 
before the august strangers who visited him. And 
in the well-known song, or historical ode of Moses, 
which he recited in the hearing of the Israelites, a 
short time before his death, (Deut. xxxii. 14.) we 
have the words ‘‘ butter of kine.” Butter is also 
mentioned in the song of Deborah and Barak, Judges 
v. 25. Certain friends (2 Sam. xvii. 29.) are said 
to have brought to Mahanaim, butter and other 
articles, for the refreshment of David and his army 
during the rebellion of his son Absalom. Honey and 
butter are also mentioned Job xx. 17; and in chap. 
xxix. 6. he says, ‘‘ When I washed my steps with 
butter, and the rock poured me out rivers of oil.” 
Butter and honey are also mentioned in the well- 
known passage in the 7th chapter of Isaiah, where 
the prophet foretells of the child, that he should eat 
butter and honey. And in the 30th chapter of the 
Proverbs it is said, ‘‘ the churning of milk bringeth 
forth butter.” But it is to be observed, that in all 
these passages, the Hebrew word rendered butter is 
hemde, which Biblical critics agree in allowing to 
signify sour thick milk or cream. Besides, it is 
plain that hemde alludes to something fluid, for it 
was used to wash the feet. The error of supposing 
hemde to mean a concrete substance like butter, ap- 
pears to have arisen from the Septuagint, who trans- 
late the Hebrew term by Souvryeov, a word which, as 
they lived in Egypt two centuries after Hippocrates, 
they might no doubt have heard of, and supposed to 
correspond to the Hebrew word hemde. ‘That they 
meant, however, no more than cream by the term 
is highly probable. No doubt, the common trans- 
lation of the passage already quoted from the Pro- 
verbs, may be thought to prove clearly that the 
making of butter by churning was well known among 
But the original words signify to 
squeeze or press; and might have been as well trans- 
lated ‘‘the pressing of the milker bringeth forth 
milk.” And this accords better with what imme- 
diately follows, viz. ‘‘and the wringing of the nose 
hringeth forth blood.” 
It was late before the Greeks appear to have had 
any knowledge of butter. No mention is made of it 
by any of their early poets. Homer, ‘Theocritus, 
and Kuripides, though they frequently speak of milk 
and cheese, say nothing of butter: and Aristotle, in 
his ‘ History of Animals,’ at first assigns to milk 
only two component parts, viz. the serous and the 
caseous ; though afterwards he remarks, as it were 
by the bye, that there is likewise found in milk a 
fat substance, which, under certain circumstances, is 
like oil. Hippocrates, as we have already remarked, 
is the first Greek writer who mentions butter; and 
he frequently prescribes it as an external application 
under another name. The poet Anaxandrides, who 
flourished a short time after Hippocrates, describing 
the wedding of Iphicrates, who married the daughter 
of Cotys king of Thrace, and the Thracian enter- 
tainments given on that occasion, mentions the use 
of butter for food among these people as a matter of 
curiosity; a sure proof that it was not so employed 
among the Greeks. Strabo, who flourished about 
thirty years before the Christian era, says the Lusi- 
tanians and Ethiopians used butter instead of oil, 
and /Mlian, who lived in the end of the first 
century, says that the Indians employed butter to 
anoint the wounds of their elephants. Plutarch, 
who was his cotemporary, speaks of a visit paid by 
a Lacedemonian lady to Berenice the wife of Deio- 
tarus, which according to him, seems not to have 
been mutually agreeable; for he says the one smelled 
so much of butter, and the other of perfume, that 
neither of them could endure the other. Dioscorides 
(B.c. 33,) is the first author who recommends butter 
as an article of diet, and says it might be melted 
fresh, and poured over pulse and other vegetables 
instead of oil, and used in pastry. He also recom- 
mends it for medicinal purposes. But Galen, who 
wrote at Rome about 200 years later, is much more 
full on the healing virtues of butter. He is surprised 
that Dioscorides should have said it was made of 
sheep’s and goat’s milk, for he himself had seen it 
made of cow’s milk; and such butter, he affirms, 
was always the fattest and best, and had from thence, 
he believes, derived its name. He says it may be 
used instead of oil in mollifying leather, and that in 
cold countries which did not produce oil, butter was 
used in the baths, and was evidently a real fat, be- 
cause, when poured over burning coals, it readily 
caught fire. From all this it is evident, that butter 
in his time must have been very little known to the 
Greeks and Romans. Strabo, speaking of the ancient 
Britons, says, though they had abundance of milk, 
some of them were so ignorant that they did not 
know how to make a cheese. 
other hand, affirms, that ‘‘the barbarous nations,” 
by which he usually means the Germans and Britons, 
not only made cheese, but likewise butter, which 
they used as a most agreeable food; and the use of 
this food was a distinguishing mark betwixt the rich 
and the poor. 
milk of the goat, the sheep, and the cow; most com- 
monly from the latter, but that the milk of the ewe | 
produced the fattest butter. He likewise describes 
the form of the vessel employed by the barbarians in 
making it, which seems to have been not very differ- 
ent from what we nowuse. It was covered, he says, 
and had holes in the lid. He is the first Latin writer 
who mentions the word butyrum, though Vossius 
thinks it is to be found in Columella. Whether 
585° 
But Pliny, on the | 
To these nations he ascribes the in- | 
vention of butter, and says they made it from the | 
Tacitus by lac concretum, which he affirms to have | 
been the most common foo of the Germans, means | 
cheese or butter, it is impossible to determine. The 
Greeks, then, seem to have derived their first ac- | 
quaintance with butter from the Thracians or the | 
Scythians, and the Romans from the Germans. Nor 
did either of them, after learning its nature, employ 
it as an article of food, but only as an ointment in 
their baths, and in medicine. Their agricultural 
writers, who treat largely of milk, cheese, and oil, 
as food, take no notice of butter, nor is it mention- 
ed by Apicius. 
therefore, formerly mentioned, that butter might be 
conveniently used in cookery, seems not to have been 
attended to. Fourcroy thinks, that the effect of 
agitation in separating butter from milk, must have 
been accidentally made by the Scythians or other 
wandering tribes while transporting their milk from 
place to place in skins or other vessels. Sidonius 
Apollinaris informs us, that the ancient Burgundians 
were accustomed to besmear their hair with butter ; 
and Clemens Alexandrinus says, that the ancient | 
Christians of Egypt burned butter in their lamps at — 
their altars instead of oil; a practice somewhat simi- | 
lar to that which has been retained by the Abyssini- | 
ans. In the Roman Catholic churches, it was an- 
The suggestion of Dioscorides, | 
ciently allowed, during Christmas time, to use butter _ 
instead of oil, on account of the great consumption — 
of this in other ways. 
This accounts for the name | 
«butter tower,” which we find in some places, as at — 
Rouen, Notre Dame, and others. 
In 1500, George © 
d’Amboise, Archbishop of Rouen, finding the oil fail | 
in his diocese during Lent, permitted the use of but.. 
ter in their lamps, on condition that each person 
should pay six deniers for the indulgence, with which 
sum this tower was erected. 
From all the accounts of the method of making 
butter transmitted to us by the ancients, we have 
reason to think that they were unacquainted with the 
art of giving it that firmness and consistence which is 
so valuable a quality of modern butter. They always 
speak of it as a liquid substance. With them 1t was 
