what with the diet of the cows, and this necessitates a change in the temperature. A rather higher temperature will be required in winter than in summer; the temperature must also be higher for sour cream than for sweet cream. Generally speaking, perfectly sweet cream should be placed in the churn at 50° to 55° Fahr., and sour cream at 52° to 60°. When sour milk is churned for butter the temperature must be about 65°. The exact temperature most suitable for churning may be ascertained by recording every day the temperature employed, with the length of time occupied in churning, and the amount and character of the produce; when this is done the temperature for each day can be regulated from the experience of the preceding working. The temperature will rise several degrees during churning.

Churning must always be stopped as soon as the butter comes; any over-churning spoils the texture of the butter. The butter is then separated from the buttermilk, washed with cold water, and after standing to solidify is carefully worked and pressed to expel all watery matter; over-working in this stage will also spoil the grain and make the butter greasy. Butter made from perfectly sweet cream keeps far better than butter made from sour cream, as the latter always contains curd, a substance very prone to change. Salt is generally added to improve the keeping quality of butter.

First-class butter will contain about 10 per cent. of water, and not more than 0.5 per cent. of casein, but in ordinary butter these proportions are greatly exceeded. Of the fatty acids in butter about 6 per cent. are soluble in water when separated from the glycerol with which they are combined; this fact serves to distingush butter from other animal fats in which soluble fatty acids are absent. When butter becomes rancid and glycerides of the fatty acids are partly decomposed, and the fatty acids liberated; the odor and flavor of rancid butter are largely due to free butyric acid.

Buttermilk. The liquid remaining in the churn after the separation of the butter from the cream has been but little investigated; it must vary a good deal in composition. Danish experiments found that when churning the cream from 100 pounds of new milk .07 to .20 pound of fat was left in the buttermilk.

Cheese. This substance is prepared by the action of rennet on milk. The rennet solidifies the milk by separating the casein from solution; the fat globules are separated at the same time, being entangled in the curd formed. Rennet is a watery extract prepared from the fourth stomach of the calf; its power of coagulating milk is apparently due to the presence of a ferment, which doubtless plays a similar part

in the ordinary process of digestion in the calf's stomach. The action of rennet is very slow in the case of cold milk, it becomes much more energetic as the temperature rises; at 135° Fahr. it ceases to act. Milk becomes sour when curdled by rennet, but the production of acid (lactic acid) is not essential to the curdling.

The composition of cheese depends principally on that of the milk from which it is made; rich cheese is made from new milk, cream being sometimes added to the milk for the production of the richest sorts; poorer kinds of cheese are made from milk wholly or partially skimmed.

The temperature at which the milk is curdled is of great importance. If the the temperature is low, the curd is very tender and the whey difficult to separate; if, on the other hand, the heat is too great, the curd shrinks too much and becomes hard and dry. A temperature from 74° to 84° is generally employed, the lower temperature for thin cheeses, the higher (80° to 84°) for thick.

When the curd is sufficiently firm it is carefully cut in all directions, and the whey allowed to drain off. To facilitate the drainage of the whey the curd is often heated after cutting, with the view of making it shrink and harden; the temperature used at this point must not exceed 100° Fahr. The drained and broken curd is next put into a press, to remove more effectually the last portions of whey. It is then pulverized in a mill, salted, again passing through the mill, and is then ready for filling into the frames. Curd when put into the frames should contain, according to Volcker about 54 per cent. of water when thin cheese is to be made, and not more than 45 per cent. if thick cheese is manufactured. The curd from skim milk will contain much more water than a curd rich in butter. The frames filled with curd are subjected to a gradually increasing pressure for several days. The cheese is then removed from the frame and placed in the cheese-room to ripen.

Cheese ripens best at a moderately warm temperature; about 70° is a suitable degree of heat. During the operation a loss of water takes place, the loss being greatest in the case of poor cheese. If decay, or a growth of mould occurs, a further considerable loss of weight takes place, the casein and fat of the cheese being decomposed by the organic life thus introduced, while carbonic acid, ammonia, and a variety of other products are formed. It was once believed that fat was produced during the ripening of cheese; this, however is not the

case.

A very rich cheese, as old Stilton, may contain about 20 per cent. of water, 44 per cent. of fat, and about 29 per cent. of casein. In a good

Cheddar or Cheshire cheese we should find about 33 per cent. of water, 33 per cent. of fat, 28 per cent. of casein, and about 3 to 4 per cent. of ash constituents, nearly half of which would be common salt. In skimmilk cheeses the percentage of water is greater, and that of fat less. Thus a poor single Gloucester may contain 38 per cent. of water, 22 per cent. of fat, and 31 per cent. of casein. In skim-milk cheese made in Denmark, from milk from which the cream has been very completely removed by the ice system, only 4 to 5 per cent. of fat are present.

Whey. The whey which drains from the curd in cheese-making is a perfectly transparent liquid, containing the sugar and albumin originally present in the milk; it should not contain more than a trace of butter. If, however, the curd has been roughly treated, the milk has been rich, and the temperature high, larger quanties of butter will be present, and the cheese suffer in consequence. When whey is rich in butter it is generally allowed to stand until the butter has risen; the butter may then be added to the next churning. The average compo sition of whey is shown by Volcker's analyses to be as follows: Water, 93.0; albuminoids, 1.0; fat, 0.3; sugar and lactic acid. 5.0; ash, 0.7. The albuminoid ratio is 1:5.2.

In all the operations of the dairy the greatest cleanliness must be observed; all vessels should be washed with hot water as soon as done with, to destroy any adhering ferment. Without such precautions no good butter or cheese can be made.

PRACTICAL BOTANY.

BY PROF. L. R. TAFT.

Read before the Farmers' Meeting held at Columbia, Boone county, Nov. 4-5, 1886.

Even in these days of enlightened agriculture few persons are able to understand the necessity of a scientific education to a man who is to be "only a farmer."

Many will admit, perhaps, that a knowledge of the rudiments of chemistry and geology is desirable to enable us to understand the nature of our soils, to assist us in selecting soils adapted to different crops, and to reveal the methods employed by nature in evolving plant food.

These sciences, useful though they are, are of less importance than some of the others. The chemical force acts for the most part only upon inert and dead matter, and the knowledge of its influence is to the practical farmer of less value than an insight into the working of that mysterious force, life, which is able to transmute the inorganic and mineral elements of the soil and air, into the wonderful vegetable creations which cover the earth and to which the animal world looks for its food.

Just as the early chemists, or alchemists as they were called, bent over their crucibles in search of the elixir of life, so the first botanists ascribed medicinal qualities to every species of plant, and sought them with the hope of obtaining new medicines. The first botanies published in the English language were known as herbals, and were but little more than a list of medicinal plants and their properties.

It is probably owing to this that most people seem to find some coincidence between a bundle of herbs and botany. Many object to the scientific nomenclature and descriptive terms. They forget that Latin is the language of scientific men the world over, and that when a plant is described and named by a botanist in Europe, for instance, the same name will answer in America. As a result of this only a small proportion of our plants have English names.

The use of one universal language thus prevents confusion, while the words are as easily rememered, spelled and pronounced as English names. The idea that the ability to call five hundred or a thousand plants by their Latin names makes a botanist cannot be too vigorously opposed.

The other side is rather too strongly stated in the remark sometimes heard, that a person can be an excellent botanist without knowing the name of a single species. Some persons lay claim to being botanists who have collected and arranged in an herbarium two or three hundred plants. This alone, however, does not make botanists of them. Herbariums or collections of dried plants are of great value for reference, and if, while collecting and preparing the specimens, the powers of observation are used aright, considerable knowledge as to the structure and habits of the plant can be obtained.

One of the principal advantages of the biological over the classical and similar studies is in the abundant opportunities given for perfecting the powers of observation. Says Prof. Lindley: "These subjects train the memory and reasoning faculties, but do not teach the habit of observation." Botany, according to Webster, is the science which treats of the structure of plants; the functions of their parts, their places of growth, their classification and the terms employed in their description and denomination.

Taking this definition of botany, there can be no stronger statements of its value to the farmer than those of Liebig, who says: "The scientific basis of agriculture embraces a knowledge of all the conditions of vegetable life, of the origin of the elements of plants, and of the source from which they derive their nourishment," and of Lindley: "Good agriculture and horticulture are founded upon the laws of vegetable physiology, and no man deserves the name of gardener who is not master of everything known as to the way in which plants feed, breathe, grow, digest and have their being."

Taking this remark as a guide we can easily perceive that for the performance of their functions, plants must have digestive, respiratory and other organs, and careful observation will show us that, although unlike the corresponding parts of animals, they are adapted to the performance of similar functions.

The simplest plants, like the lowest animals, are microscopic in size, and consist of but one cell. They are nothing more than a mass of protoplasm, a substance similar to the white of an egg, enveloped in a thin membrane. As we go higher in the scale of being we find the forms becoming more complex. They consist of many cells arranged in threads and in expansions of various shapes which constitute the