Page:The American Cyclopædia (1879) Volume III.djvu/507

 BUTTERNUT BUTTER TREE 501 feathered tribes, the analogy holding good not only in their brilliant colors and manner of flight, but also in the nature of their nutriment, the honeyed juices of flowers. The happy life of the butterfly, flitting from flower to flower, from one sensual delight to another, resembles that of professed pleasure-seekers, the " butter- flies of fashion," whose only object is enjoy- ment, whose existence is a blank, and whose lives add nothing to the progress of humanity ; they are mere useless consumers of the pro- ducts of other men's labors ; a whole genera- tion dies, and is deservedly forgotten. From the transformations of the butterfly, natural theology has drawn one of the most simple, beautiful, and convincing arguments for an existence beyond the grave. We see the airy, brilliant, perfect insect, derived from the crawl- ing, disgusting, and voracious caterpillar a worm transformed into a sylph a change that no one, unless it had been actually seen, would believe possible. Reasoning from analogy, this emblem of the butterfly has seemed typical of the change of the corruptible into the incor- ruptible after death; the grovelling human desires are represented by the creeping cater- pillar ; in the chrysalis we have presented to us the darkness and stillness of the tomb ; and in the butterfly we recognize a newborn ex- istence of the spirit, freed from the imperfec- tions of the earthly and finite, and rejoicing in the pleasures of immortality. BUTTERNUT, or Whit* Walnut (juglans cine- rea, Linn.), a beautiful broad-headed American tree, growing 20 to 30 ft. high, with numerous spreading branches and a smooth ash-colored bark. Its leaves, 12 to 18 inches long, consist of 6 to 18 pinnse terminated by an odd one, on a long footstalk. The sterile flowers issue from Leaves, Flower, Fruit, and cross section of Nut the sides ot the last year's shoots in long green catkins, each flower enclosing 8 to 12 brown sessile stamens ; the fertile flowers are 2 to 7 on a terminal downy stalk ; the flowers expand in May, and the fruit ripens in September and October. The form of the fruit is oblong ovoid; it is crowned at the summit by the stigma and ends of the calyx, and invested with glandular hairs secreting a resinous and odor- ous substance; the outer husk is thin and tough, of a dark brown color when ripe, cov- ering a hard, thick-furrowed, and sharply ridged and sculptured nut, about 2 inches in length, rounded at the base and acute at the apex; the kernel is sweet and pleasant, but from its abundance of oil (whence the name) soon turns rancid unless carefully dried. A mild and useful laxative is extracted from the inner bark of the root of the butternut tree, and the bark and shells afford a brown color used in dyeing wool. An inferior sugar can be obtained from the sap, and the leaves, which abound in acrid matter, have been employed as a substitute for Spanish flies. The half-grown fruit, gathered in June, is employed in making excellent pickles, first removing the downiness by scalding in water and rubbing with a harsh cloth. The timber is valuable, being tough and not liable to attack by worms. It is less hard than black walnut (/. nigra), but nevertheless may be used for gun stocks, being equally stiff and elastic, for coach panels, wooden bowls, and drawers in cabinet work, and for posts and rails or smaller joists in carpentry. The rich yellow color and close grain make it a very desirable wood for cabinet work or interior finish, forming a marked contrast to black walnut. The species is found in the Oanadas, in New England and the middle states, in Kentucky, and on the banks of the Missouri. BUTTERS, in chemistry, an old name applied to substances having at the ordinary temper- ature the consistency of butter. The word was originally restricted to anhydrous chlo- rides of the metals, as for example butter of antimony, bismuth, tin, and zinc. It was afterward applied to vegetable fats, as butter of orris, cacao, cocoa, and nutmeg. The word is at present little used, although retained in some of the pharmacopoeias. BUTTER TREE (bassia), a genus of the natu- ral order sapotaeete, found in India and Af- rica, the seeds of which yield a sweet buttery substance. The Indian butter, fulwa, orphul- wara tree (B. butyracea) grows wild on the Almora hills in India, the trunk often meas- uring 50 ft. in height and 5 or 6 ft. in circum- ference, with broad oval leaves from 6 to 12 in. long, large pale yellow blossoms, and pulpy fruit about the size of a pigeon's egg, contain- ing two or three roundish brown seeds. The fat expressed from the seeds is of the consis- tency of lard, is white, will keep for months, and is used as a substitute for animal butter, and medicinally for rheumatism and contrac- tions of the limbs. The Indian oil or illupie tree (B. longifolia), similar to the preceding, grows in plantations on the S. coast of Ooro- mandel, and the fruit by pressure yields an oil used by the natives for soap, in cooking, and in