NOTES ON RURAL TOPICS.

Otago Witness, Issue 2171, 3 October 1895, Page 5

NOTES ON RURAL TOPICS.

There are thone who are wont to disparage scientific butter-making, and Scientific v?ho roaiotain that good farm Butler-making, butfcrr is far before tbe factory article as turned out by even the best of our dairy factories. Be that as it may, the gilt-edged article, if produced by the farm wife, appears to be kept for family use, for certainly little or none of it finds its way into the market. I havj time and again bceu struck with the fact thst moat of the batter cent to market ia unQt for human food ; and I speak of an expsiicuce gained ovtr a wide area of couafcry inthiscolouy. Inagricjlturaldistricts, wherethe bent of feed ia in abundance, and every natural circumstance in favour of the production of a first-clftfs article, a single pound of really good butter is not obtainable at the lecal store for lotc or money. In a country possessing every natural advantage this cerbainly ought not to be the case. Ignorauce of the first principles uuderlying the makinj of butter must be llw fault, and there is serious need for a modicum of scientific training. When one sees the conditions under which the manufactured article is produced there is no louger any need to nvirvel that most of the butter mide en the farm is not eatable. To begin witb, the milking is as oftou as not done smidsb the filthit'it surroundings, any tumble-down hovel being deeded good enough for a cow byre. Affcar wading throngh a mixture of mud and manure to the belly, tho cows are driven iut'j a filthy cow bail and milked by ditty hands, or if care enough is token to wash the hands of the milker and the teats of the cow, the foetid odours of tho stockyard are-certnin to toa'anainate the milk, for there is nothing so sensitive as milk to evil o 'ours. The milk is allowed to stand amid i - s filthy surroundings until all of the cows are milked, instead of being removed as toon as it is drawn from the cow. Tben in i,oi one fnrmhou«e in a hu drod is such a thing as an aerator kept wherewith to accata the milk to drive off bad odours before it is sat in the pans. If the Danish method of heating the milk to near the boiling tciipc-rature after aerating wvro generally ad'p'ed there would be in ore Bweet butter in th« market. Then, in too mauy casei any makeshift building is thought good enough for a dairy, irrespective of ventilation. Tha result is that the whole atmosphere beonirs saturated wi^h malevolent odours, end the whole of the milk i« spoiled. The cream t*k<»n from the milk is kept amid the same surrcuudin^s, aud gene- j

without a satisfactory butter-worker, and no farm wife should make up butter without one of come kind."

It is a well-known fact that milk is especially apt to sour during the prevalenco Xhe o f a thuuderßtorm, and it is Influence of P°P lllllll y supposed that" the li htiT tr e^ cfcr ' cal discharge his SDine 11 9tn s mysterious iufluenco upon the on Milk. milk. This, however, is entirely erroneous, according to the results of a serious of careful tests made by a ccrtaiu Italian professor. In his first experiment be pvsed an eltctrical discharge from a Holtz machine between two balls of platinum hanging two inches apart in a bottle containing a quart of frch milk. Then ho Bent a current between two strips of platinum at thebottjm of a V-shaped lube filled with milk ; and lastly, he subjected milk iv a test tube to tho action of a strong battery current through a silk-covered copper wire wound spirally round the tube. Now these tests appear to ba &b thorough as could possibly be made, and the result was that instead of acidulation of milk being has'ened by tho action of electricity it was actually retarded. Tha miik whit h b;ul been thus oubj°citd to a strong current of electricity did cob turn sour until tha Beventh day, while* tbe other portion of the same that was not bo treated was quite sjur on fie evening of the tbird day. The profe'sor therefore considers tbat he has quito disproved tho popular theory of lijhtuing b.-iiiig the direct cause of the aciduItition of milk. He next tried ozone, and found it to be the mysterious agent of milk souring. Ozone is oxygen in an active utate as distingivshed from oxygen iv its ordinary p\ssive cmdit'on, as forming part of the composition of atmospheric nir. Oxygen is brought intj t i? activa or highly olectro-nrgativo atata through a discharge of electricity, co that if milk souring is due to the presence of ozjne, the occurrence of a thuuderstorm has something to do with the miaclrcf.

Stieaca is always on the march, and at presuit it seems to be devoting a groit Churning deal of atlc .tion to malter.i perlrith* Acids, t.uning to ths d*iry. Ouc of the Uteit discoveries in this direction is that if certain acids are added to s-^eet cream it is not nccesiary to wait for the v. veloprnent of lactic acid bacteria in the creim, but that ij could b3 churned at once without the loss of the true butter flavour usually considered due to the cream

deal with these while the cow or heifor ib in milk, and they Bhould therefore be tackled when tho beast is dried off. If the warts tiro long enough they may be removed by lying a tight thread around as a ligature ; if this can't be done some caustic application must be tried. Obstructions in tbc texts caused by milk stones, sin -ill tu 'nours, and stricture of the passage are not easily tretvtod, and it is hardly worth while to bother with cows thus affected if they can bo fattened. Seme cows allow their milk to leak away if not attended to punctually to the minute. This is due to relaxation of tho sphincter that in its pxopsr action prevents the *pontaneou* flow of milk. In some CRses this is caused by neglect and over-accumulation of milk in the udder ; in other caeres it is constitutional, and if in a bad form the cow is not worth much as a dairy cow. Elastic bands have been tried to compress the teat tight enough to close the sphincter, but there is dangr-r also in tho use of the band, as it may strangulate the teat and caute further damage in that way. I have known such cows to bp given to suckle two cslves, ho that she shall hive no milk to fpurc for leakage ; but failing that remedy the butch-si's knite is the only cure.

I daresay there arc many old farmers now living who can remember the old Ploughs wooden ploughs of the early and part of this century, and perhaps riougliinjj. have known a village carpenter who could make a plough iv a day. There has bom an immense advancement in the improvemont of ploughs during the last 30 or 4-0 years. I cau remember the old ploughs with noodeu beam and stilts, but havo no knowledge of a wholly wooden plough, mouldboard aud all. There was great opposition to the introduction of iron mouldboards on the part of the British workman, who avorred that th»se iiMn ploughs were tbe cause of rust nud mildew in the crops. A*> all events the first iron mouldboards wero very w sitisfactory, as, (o my kuowludge, thoy were so badly shaped as to leavo the furrows on edge instead cf turning them over. It v*a<? in 1879 th*t the firM, Oliver chilled iron plough was iutroducaii iuto Scotland frcm Americ*, whore they had been in vie for some years previous to that. The chilling of iron was known in Eng'aud as early o 1852, but it did not appear to have been allied .to tho mouldboards of ploughs until th<, introduction of the Oliver plough, but since then very few ploughs have been made without being chilled on the surface of the

! new land conld not be broken tip witU such an implement. For the roughest kind of new land the present stylo of plough may be the most serviceable .Implement ia point of strength, bat for lighter work it ought to bo practicable to design an implement to do the work of lighter draught. Howover, that is one of the problems of the future. Iv the meantime we must be content with the plough as we find it till such timo as the iriventor comes along with an implement built o& entirely different lines. Aosicotjl.