Page:The American Cyclopædia (1879) Volume III.djvu/501

 BUTTER BUTTERFLY 495 which are obtained from the best practice, the process is inferior to that of the modern cream- eries. Dr. Ure gives the following directions for curing butter, known as the Irish method : "Take one part of sugar, one of nitre, and two of the best Spanish great salt, and rub them together into a fine powder. This com- position is to be mixed thoroughly with the butter as soon as it is completely freed from the milk, in the proportion of one ounce to 16 ; and the butter thus prepared is to be pressed tight into the vessel prepared for it, so as to leave no vacuities. This butter does not taste well till it has stood at least a fortnight ; it then has a rich, marrowy flavor that no other but- ter ever acquires." At Constantinople fresh butter is melted over a slow fire, and the scum removed as it rises. It is then salted, and may be kept in good condition two years. Th6nard says that the heat should not exceed 140 F. The ancients were almost entirely unacquainted with butter. It is mentioned in the English version of the Old Testament, but modern Bib- lical scholars regard the Hebrew word 'hemah, rendered butter, as denoting cream or a liquid preparation. The oldest mention of butter is by Herodotus, in his account of the Scythians. Hippocrates mentions both butter and cheese. Plutarch tells of a visit paid by a Spartan lady to Berenice, the wife of Deiotarus, tetrarch of Galatia. This lady smelled so strongly of sweet ointment and Berenice of butter that they could not endure each other's presence. jElian says that the Indians anointed the wounds of their elephants with butter. Dioscorides mentions the making of butter from sheep's milk, by agitation, and the pouring it in a melted state over pulse and vegetables, instead of oil, and recommends its use in pastry. At that time a soot was made by burning butter in a lamp, from which they prepared an ointment for in- flammation of the eyes. Galen says that cows' milk yields the best butter, goats' milk giving an inferior article, and asses' milk the poorest. He says that butter may be very properly em- ployed for ointments, and that when leather is besmeared with it the same purpose is answer- ed as when it is rubbed over with oil. Butter was scarcely used or known by the Greeks or Romans during the 2d century. The Greeks obtained their knowledge of it from the Scyth- ians, Thracians, and Phrygians, while the Ro- mans became acquainted with it through the Germans. The Roman writers say that the Germans used a great deal of milk, some af- firming that they made it into cheese, while others say that they made butter. Pliny says that they used butter as food, but did not make cheese. The Romans, however, did not use it as food, but as an ointment and in medicine ; and their writers on agriculture do not men- tion it as an article of food, as they do cheese and oil. The olive oil which the Romans pro- duced in great quantities seems to have satisfied their tastes, and even at the present day butter is rarely used in southern Europe. The state 185 VOL. in. 32 of New York produces more than one fifth of all the butter that is made in the United States ; the total product of all the states in 1870 be- ing 514,092,683 Ibs., of which the product of New York was 107,147,526 Ibs. Pennsylva- nia produced 60,834,644, Ohio 50,266,372, Il- linois 36,083,405, Iowa 27,512,179, Michigan 24,400,185, Indiana 22,915,385, Wisconsin 22,- 473,036, Vermont 17,844,396, Tennessee 9,571,- 069, Massachusetts 6,559,161, and Maryland 5,014,729 Ibs. The great butter counties in New York are St. Lawrence, Delaware, Che- nango, Chautauqua, and Jefferson. Orange county still retains its reputation for excellent butter, but furnishes a much smaller quantity than several others. St. Lawrence in 1870 produced 8,419,095, Delaware 6,135,715, Che- nango 5,319,814, Chautauqua 5.049,037, Jeffer- son 4,883,508, and Orange 1,403,409 Ibs. The most important butter county of Pennsylvania in 1870 was Bradford, which produced 3,704,- 709 Ibs. The exports of butter from the Uni- ted States to various countries for the year ending June 30, 1871, were 3,965,043 Ibs., valued at $853,096. Of this amount 2,201,934 Ibs. went to Great Britain and her possessions. BDTTERFIELD, William, an English architect, born Sept. 7, 1814. He is known as one of the leaders in the Gothic revival in England, and for his application of color to external decoration. Among his works may be men- tioned St. Augustine's college, at Canterbury ; All Saints' church, Margaret street, London; St. Alban's church, Gray's Inn road, London ; and the new chapel of Balliol college, Oxford. IM TTKKFLY, the popular name of several families of insects of the order lepidoptera, undergoing a complete metamorphosis, having four wings, and a tongue. changed into a suc- torial organ ; from the last character they come under the sub-class of haustellata of Fabricius. The term butterfly includes all the diurnal lepi- doptera, or those which fly by day, of which the papilionid are the principal family ; the other families, as given by Mr. Stephens, are nymphalida, lyc<mad<E, and hesperiada. The crepuscular and nocturnal lepidoptera will be noticed under the titles HAWK MOTH and MOTH. The order was named by Linncens from the Greek words /l7rf (scale), and nrepd (wings), indicating the characters peculiar to the wings, which are covered on both sides with imbricated scales or feathers, to the unas- sisted eye presenting the appearance of dust or powder, but under the microscope display- ing an arrangement as uniform and charac- teristic of species as that of the scales of fishes and the feathers of birds. The beauty of this order has made them the special study of natu- ralists and the delight of collectors, so that their habits, metamorphoses, and structure are very well known. The most interesting and in- structive points are connected with their meta- morphoses, and these will be more fully al- luded to under the title CATEBPILLAR. In the lepidoptera, the parts about the month are