milk will not ripen for churning, and in such case should be removed for a time to a temperature of 55 deg. The sudden warming of the milk will not always enable it to yield up its butter readily. One butter maker says: "Carefully conducted' experiments prove that more butter is obtained from a given quantity of milk when set in pans partly filled than when full." This is in opposition to the theory of A. B. Dickenson.

A French chemist declares that butter may be made without churning, by the use of a filter made of white felt, in the form of a bag, in the four corners of which are inserted porous strings, like candle wick, to hasten off the fluid portion of the milk. The bag being suspended by the four corners, from twenty-four to thirty hours, the contents of the filter will be found to be of the consistence of " smear case" (soft cheese). This solidified cream is then placed in a linen bag, tied tight, and the bag kneaded like a roll of dough. In a few minutes the mass grows liquid, and the butter and buttermilk are separated.

One large butter maker says:

"I use a horse-power churn, of a capacity sufficiently great to make 120 pounds of butter. I always try the temperature of my churn before putting in the cream. If below 55 deg., I raise it to that point with warm water, and keep the cream as near that point as possible. As soon as the cream is in the churn I start the horse, and keep him moving at a steady gait until the butter is broken, or begins to gather in small lumps. Opposite the opening through which the cream is poured into the churn is an inch hole, which is stopped with a plug. When the butter is formed as above stated, I open this hole and draw off the buttermilk, then start the horse again, and keep him going until I gather the butter into a solid mass. This accomplished, it is taken from the churn and put into a tub prepared for it. I then weigh the whole mass, and transfer it to the butter worker, when it is worked over twice, after which I add one dessert tablespoonful of the very best dairy salt to every pound. I again work it well, so as to incorporate the salt thoroughly. It is again weighed into pound lumps and printed. The human hand is never allowed to touch the butter, nor is water ever used to wash it."

Of course it is sold immediately; if it is to be kept we think it must be washed.

BUTTER AFFECTED BY FOOD OF COWS.

The quality of all butter is so greatly affected by the food of the cows, that no one can make good butter, although he has good cows, if their food is poor. In summer there is nothing better than clover pasture. At any rate, the pasture must afford sweet grass, running water, and trees for shade and rest. A cow should be selected for her quiet disposition, as much as any other quality, for a butter-making cow; for milk alone this is not so important. If she has vicious propensities she cannot be cured by viciousness. In winter, clover hay, cured in the most perfect manner, is better for butter than any other hay. To this add slops once or twice every day, composed of bran, shorts, cut potatoes, corn meal partially cooked, and salt; and an occasional handful of bone meal, lime, ashes, or charcoal dust, will be found advantageous. Carrots are always good for a butter cow. Nothing should ever be given her that is not sweet enough

for you to eat yourself. And even that is not always good food for a cow, as turnips, cabbages and onions are considered good food for the table— they are not for the stable, if sweet milk is an object.

Then she must be kept in a clean, sweet-smelling stable, warm and dry, but ventilated. The same stable should be used in summer for milking, after which the cows may be allowed to sleep out, if it is such weather that they can lie upon the ground in comfort; and if not, keep them in until after milking in the morning. Every cow should know her own stall as well as a man knows his own bed, and they will soon learn to be unwilling to eat or be milked anywhere else. Food and care of the cow, and perfect quiet and comfort for her in every respect, are the first requisites in making good butter.

A stable can be kept sweet enough to lodge in by the daily use of plaster, charcoal, prepared muck, or an occasional sprinkling of dilute sulphuric acid or solution of copperas.

It is necessary for a full flow of milk to maintain a continual supply of albuminous food, while in the latter period of fattening such kinds of food. are superfluous, and only tend to enrich the manure heap. There is one leading feature in his practice, to which the utmost importance is attached by Mr. Horsfall, an English dairyman-the maintenance of the condition of his cows giving a large yield of milk. This is done by the addition of bean meal in greater quantity to those yielding the most milk. He refers also to the effect of clover upon the supply of milk as known to all dairymen, the dry material of which is nearly as rich in albumen as beans, and the inference is drawn that "albuminous matter is the most essential element in the food of a milch cow, and that any deficiency in the supply of this will be attended by loss of condition, and a consequent diminution in the quality of her milk." He is of the opinion that "you can increase the proportion of butter in milk more than that of casein or other solid parts.” Rape-cake seems more efficient for this purpose than linseed cake, the oily matter in this seed more nearly resembling that in butter than that of flaxseed. He also says: "It seems worthy of remark that a cow can yield a far greater weight of butter than she can store up in solid fat. Numerous instances occur where a cow gives off two pounds of butter per day-fourteen pounds per week—while half that quantity, probably, would not be laid on in fat if she was fed for that purpose."

These "English notions" are worthy of American attention.

BUTTER AFFECTED BY PACKAGES.

It is one of the greatest mistakes that butter packers make to put it up in bad packages. Let it be taken for an incontrovertible fact that, as a general thing, a dairy of butter of uniform quality may be packed, one-half in rough, untidy casks, and the other in neat, sweet looking firkins, of suitable and uniform size, and that half will outsell the other at least ten per cent. The purchasers of butter by the single package or by the hundred packages, are always influenced by the outside appearance. One of the reasons why western butter sells at a price generally under the market is because it comes in bad order. How can people expect first prices for butter in mottled rolls, packed in a dry-goods box or a flour bar

rel? Such butter, when it arrives in New York, is denominated "western grease," and sells at a price corresponding with its name.

WHEN TO SKIM MILK.

The right time to skim milk is just as the milk begins to sour on the bottom of the pans. Then the cream is all at the surface, and should at once be removed, with as little of the milk as possible. That housewife or dairy-maid who thinks to obtain a greater quantity by allowing the milk to stand beyond that time labors under a mistake. Any one who doubts can try it. Milk should be looked to at least three times a day. The Dairyman's Record gives the opinion that the heating of new milk to near the boiling point, just after it is drawn from the cow, is preferable to allowing it to stand for a time before heating, and thinks both butter and cheese are improved by so doing, "because the animal odors which are objectionable would be expelled," and goes on to say that "tasteless and leathery" cheese is caused by manufacturing under too high a temperature rather than from high heating before manufacturing.

DUST AND FLY COVERS FOR MILK PANS.

To keep dust out of milk pans, make hoops of ratans or ash wood, a little larger than the tops of the pans, and stretch over and sew on them some thin cotton stuff that will not stop the circulation of the air, but will keep out the flies and mites, and when the milk is cool lay these covers on the pans. To keep out flies, use musquito netting or wire gauze instead of cloth. The wire gauze is a fine thing to cover all windows in fly time.

Some inventive Connecticut genius has contrived a portable ventilated milk closet, which, from the description, we should think a very good thing, but presume that any ingenious wood-worker could get up one a little different in form to answer the same purpose; and we recommend all families that keep but one cow to provide themselves with such a convenient ventilated milk closet, or one that will let fresh air in and foul air out, and keep the milk safe from pestiferous insects and vermin. The following item shows the benefit of keeping milk cool: "In sending milk to market, though it left the dairy perfectly sweet, it was often found curdled on delivery to customers. To remedy this the cans were cased with thick cotton cloth, and this was wet with salt water. this way the difficulty was entirely obviated."

In

The place where milk is kept, churning done, or butter stored, should be absolutely sweet, clean, and deodorized of every smell. Water-cold water, and its liberal application-is an essential about the dairy house, and outside of it; upon everything ever used, hot water, soap and sand, and hard hand work, to make absolute purity, are the essential requisites to produce good butter. Every woman should assure all the " men folks," and often repeat it to them, that no woman can make good butter if the cows are not provided with suitable food. Recollect, food and shelter, airy, roomy, clean stables, summer and winter; none of your milking in the road, among the hogs; setting milk for cream when the air is scented with the effluvia of the hog pen, or any other than that of roses, mint and new-mown hay.

Food is the first, purity the second, temperature the third requisition in making sweet, yellow butter.

Every farm house should have a room for milk; solely devoted to that and nothing else. In very dry soils this can be made easiest and best in the cellar, provided it has a chimney ventilator of ample dimensions running to the top of the house, which can be easily made when building, and no milk room is perfect without such ventilation, and in our opinion. the cause of bad butter is as much in the want of a suitable place to stand the milk, and a cool, sweet room to store the butter, as in the process of manufacture. It is all-important, also, that the milk room should be of an unvarying temperature, so far as it can be kept so without extra expenditure over the profitable advantage. An attachment to the ice house is the best place for storing the butter. The following is a very good plan for a family dairy room:

Build very convenient to the kitchen, but not adjoining, an eight inch wall brick building, eight feet by sixteen feet inside, with a door in one end and a window in the other, and arch it over ten feet high in the center, and plaster it all over outside with water-proof cement. The top should be covered with a coat of asphaltum, if to be had, or else sand and tar. Give the inside a coat of hard-finished plaster, and paint that well, so that it can be washed. Where there is a good chance for drainage, the walls may be dropped two feet below the surface, or the whole built into a hillside, in which case there can be no door nor window in one end, but there can and must be a large chimney ventilator. Make the floor of cement or flagging stone, and, if not too expensive, use stone shelves, built in the wall. The outside is to be banked up with earth and sodded over, so as to form a grassy mound, forming a sort of cave cellar. A retaining wall must be built each side of the doorway, and a shed over it, with wire screened windows in the door for ventilation, the sash being hinged to swing down and fasten to the lower half of the door. The best way to make dairy shelves is to use strips sawed one by two inches and set so that the pans will stand upon their edges, or else place them wide enough apart to receive the bottom of the pan, having cross strips nailed in to support the sides, so that the pans would only touch at four points, and so cause the milk to cool quickly, and save labor in keeping the shelves clean; for a pan of warm milk set upon a flat shelf in a room a little damp, or when the shelf has just been washed, will generate mold-certainly more than when set on strips, as here recommended.

HOW TO MAKE WINTER BUTTER.

If cows are fed with roots, meal, or even whole corn, which, by the by, is only to be tolerated when corn is worth less than twenty-five cents a bushel, there will be no complaint of poor, white butter, unless the fault is in the churning or the keeping of the milk. Milk, in winter, should be kept about the same temperature as in summer time, and should not be allowed to stand unskimmed merely because "it is taking no harm." Take off the cream, and if it is not enough for an immediate churning, let it be kept cool and sweet till enough is accumulated, when, if it is necessary to sour it, it may be put in a warm place and done all at once. When put

into the churn it should be at a temperature of 62 deg., and if kept at that, yellow butter will be got in thirty minutes by churning moderately, if your cows have had a little salt every day. Adjourned.

JOHN W. CHAMBERS, Secretary.

August 26, 1862.

Rev. Joshua Weaver, of Fordham, in the chair.

THE PLUM CROP.

Mr. Robinson asked Dr. Trimble the prospects of the plum crop in New Jersey.

Dr. Trimble. The plum crop in New Jersey this year is very good. The plum tree has a number of enemies. If a plum is rotten it will affect a number of its neighbors. I have a large bottle of curculio hatched this year from the apple. Many persons dispute that the curculio affect the apple. To test the question, I placed a quantity of earth in a barrel on which I placed a number of small apples; after the maggot was hatched it went into the ground; I then placed a musquito net over the barrel, and when the curculio arose from the earth they were caught by the net. I think if you allow the hogs to run in the orchards they will eat up every decayed apple, and so prevent the insects from hatching for another year. This year the apple moth is doing great injury to our fruit. From observation, I think the nectarine is the first choice of the eurculio; next the plum. Some persons think they save their fruit by using washes of whale oil, soap, &c. I have no faith in it. The reason we have a crop of plums this year is, last season the weather was very dry at the time the maggot was in the ground, and so it dried up; and we have no curculio this year to speak about, and necessarily we have a crop of plums.

Mr. Robinson.—I found another employment for hogs, in a convesation with some Shakers from New Lebanon. They told me for several years past their crop of apples have failed. The last season they purchased some hogs and turned them into the orchard. The hogs rooted among the trees and became regular workers. Sometimes they throw a little corn round the trees-the hogs are sure to find every grain. The Shakers do not eat pork. I found the family I staid with ate very little meat.

Dr. Trimble recommended the use of chloride of lime for improving the flavor of butter that has become rancid. The butter is washed in several waters in which a small quantity of the lime has been dissolved.

THE GRAPES OF THE WORLD.

Mr. Wm. R. Prince, Flushing, L. I., said:

It is a most astounding fact, on which the human mind may deliberately ponder, that God and Nature, when generating the Vegetable productions of our Globe, have ushered into existence Eleven edible species of the Grape in North America; none in South America but one edible specieɛ throughout the entire Eastern Hemisphere, and that one located in Asia;