A WRINKLE-TN BUTTER MAKING.

Clutha Leader, Volume VIII, Issue 408, 5 August 1881, Page 7

A WRINKLE- TN BUTTER MAKING.

We (extract the following from the New York Tribune : — While the potency of the press as a means of human progress is well known and appreciated, and in particular the aid it is renderins 1 agriculture is so generally, undeistood a« not to need special notice, yet now and then, when an instance occurs in which some distinct benefit can be traced directly to the pTess or to some particular publication, it is appropriate and, pleasant to give the honour due. Some years ago, Mr John Higgins, of Tomkins County, New York,, discovered a means of obviating 1 the injury always done to butter in working it to get the, buttermilk out, and, as many another dairyman .and farmed has done when he has made some improvement, usftd it in his own private without even thinking how much good it would, effect if other butter' makers knew it as well as himself. In churning, he found as his buttpr was coming and about ready to gather, that if, at short intervals, he put cold water enough into the churn to reduce its contents to 54degrees, or thereabouts, the butter would gather in granules the size of peas, or smaller, and that they were perfectly solid globes of butter, without a particle of buttermilk inside them. All he had to do was to rinse the butter two or three times and it was ready, without any working, to receive the salt. By avoiding all in- . jury to the grain of his butter this process so improved it in flavour and keeping and colour, that it rose at once from common t& finest gilt edged. For some time B/Ir Higgins was the only one who utilised this process, and mijjht have been the only one to this day but for the agricultural press. Coming, in 1873, to the notice of a correspondent of the New York Tribune, a plain, statement of the mode of working and its advantages was sent to us for= publication, and flew abroad . on the intelligent wings .of this, sheet among the farmers and dairymen of the country, and- was gradually, put into practice, till now it has become the ■ mode of making fancy butter. This was very apparent at the late International Dairy. Fair. From all parts of the country butter made in this way graced the tablesof the exhibition, and carried off the highest prizas. But few fell to butter gathered in the old way. The superioiity of the butter gathered in granules and freed from buttermilk without working, was plain enough, and in fact the fanciest butter is now so generally made in this wpy that it is difficult to reach extreme prices for butter which is gathered in a mass, and . then has its grain spoilt by working, like mortar, to get the buttermilk out. The visitors at the Fair who appreciated the new process and knew anything of its origin and introduction, . while they rejoiced in fche general welfare, took pleasure in remembering that a newspaper had given it to the public. This little incident may well set agricultural readers to thinking how many other improvements, perhaps equally valuable, may have been born and died in the hands of the originator, and lost to the world for want of sufficient gene- i rosity oc thoughthilness to give them , to others, when he could have done so at no expense to himself, and very little , trouble, ft hints of the mutual good; which all classes, isolated like farmers,, could do each other if, through the

press, they would with generous impulse be as ready to impart useful information as tuny are to receive k gratuitously from others. It bints also of the propriety of reading roorp, thinking more, talking rn,ore, and picking up more as well as writing more.