Page:The story of milk.djvu/19



Milk and its products have been known and used from time immemorial. In the Bible milk and milk foods are mentioned in some thirty places. In Gen. 18:8 we read: " and he (Abraham's servant) took butter and milk and set it before them "; 1 Sam. 17:28: "And Jesse said unto David, his son: bring these ten cheeses unto the captain of their thousand and look how thy brethren fare"; Prov. 30:33: "For the churning of milk bringeth forth butter," etc.

Though in some of these passages butter is mentioned it is hardly probably that this product was really made or used at the time under the climatic conditions in Palestine. More likely it was various kinds of curd and cheese which the translator called butter. At any rate, the Hebrews of that far-off day coveted milk and its products among their most valued foods. From Egyptian, Greek and Roman history it appears that knowledge of cheese goes back to the most ancient times and that it was made from the milk of sheep, goats, cows, asses, mares, in fact from all domestic animals; in the far North, Lapps and Eskimos still make it from the milk of the reindeer, the Arabs use camel's milk, Llama cheese is famous in the Cordilleras and Zebu cheese in Ceylon and India.

Even in ancient times the great food value of dairy products was recognized. Plinius tells of Zoroaster that for twenty years he lived exclusively on cheese, and Plutarch calls cheese one of the most nourishing of foods.

As time went by, the cow excelled all other domestic