and a half immediately after conflnement, and
two and a half at the end of two years, but it
then becomes richer in cream. In general,
woman's milk is extremely variable. The human
infant is born naked; he therefore requires milk
which abounds in heat-giving elements— and
Providence supplies him with it.

Butter, which may be called the soul of milk,
is introduced into the blood by the process of
digestion, and thereby serves the purpose for
which it was intended,— namely, to keep us warm
and comfortable. Butter produces considerably
more heat than lactine. It is stored away in
the magazines of our body both more easily than
lactine, and in greater quantity. For these
reasons, its digestion requires more exercise
than the digestion of lactine does.

The hue of butter varies according to season,
being paler in winter. The succulent pasturage
of early summer gives it a rich light-yellow tint,
which is imitated in some rural districts by adding
decoction of marigold flowers, or juice of
carrots, to the cream; in others, by infusion of
turmeric. Butter becomes liquid, in the shape
of oil, at a temperature of from 72° to 77° of
Fahrenheit; cold reduces it to a firm consistence,
and even makes it hard. Hence, butter is
popularly said to go mad twice a year: when it
slips through your fingers and runs away, and
when it is so stiff and stubborn that it refuses to
spread beneath the knife. There are climates
and seasons so hot that, in them, solid butter is
an impossibility, except with the help of ice.
Even in temperate climates, successful butter-making
is an art of such nicety that the vulgar
regard it as a mystery which is sometimes influenced
by other than mere natural causes.
Cows and dairies are apt to be bewitched, to the
present day. If butter won't " come," put the
key of the church door into the churn. Almost
every pastoral locality has its own proper charm,
believed to be of special efficacy, but often not
better founded than the old notion that, in insect
transformation, the head of the caterpillar becomes
the tail of the butterfly.

Milk also furnishes caseum and albumen—
cheese, and a substance resembling white of
egg— as plastic aliments, supplies to assist our
growth. They produce flesh, repair losses, and
the growth of muscle, and are harder to use up
than other matters. In cow's milk, they figure
for thirty-eight parts in a thousand; in ass's,
for twenty-one; and in woman's, for fourteen
only. Of inorganic elements, water is found in
uniform quantity in those three milks. The
salts— the materials daily employed in building
up our frames— are found in the following proportions:
seven in a thousand in cow's, five in
ass's, and two only in woman's milk. These
proportions are in perfect harmony with the respective
rapidity of growth in the respective
young. The young of either quadruped grows
much more rapidly than the baby. And therefore
— as nothing comes of nothing— it
absolutely needs a different quality of milk.

But the composition of the inorganic elements
found in milk is as complex as their destined
uses. Phosphates of lime and magnesia serve
to solidify the bones. Phosphate of soda and
potash, chloride of sodium (common salt), and
chloride of potash, enter into the composition of
the blood. The latter salt is found in the
muscles. Fluorate of lime hardens the teeth and
bones. And finally, iron, in very small quantity,
assists in forming the globules in blood.

The quality of an animal's milk varies during
the act of milking. At the commencement of
the operation it is bluish, and contains no
cream; at the close, it is extremely rich in
cream. Hence, the care taken by good dairy-women
to milk their cows dry to the very last
drop. The final draughts, sometimes called "the
strippings," are the best. Dr. Hassall confirmed
the fact by experiment, and added, that the great
difference in the amount of cream contained in
the first and last milk taken from the cow at
one milking, appears to be satisfactorily explained
on the supposition that the fatty matter
in milk obeys the same laws of gravity in the
udder of the cow that it obeys when set aside in
an open vessel.

This fact is not without its practical importance.
It is common for invalids and others
to procure their glass of milk direct from the
cow. But in this way they seldom obtain their
proper share of cream— which may be an advantage
in some cases, and a disadvantage in
others. In many places, it is usual for cows to
be milked in the presence of the purchasers.
Although in this way the buyer succeeds in
procuring it genuine, he does not always obtain
the best milk.

The adulteration of milk is one of the most
noxious frauds that can be committed in supplying
food for public consumption. True, it
does not actually administer poison; but it
strikes at the root of a nation's health by enfeebling
the young, pinching the underfed, and
stinting the sustenance allowed to the sick and
aged. It is like committing murder by pinpricks.
Where aliment is measured out to each
mouth, as in innumerable public and private
establishments, the daily subtraction of even a
small proportion becomes, in the long run, a
serious evil. It is starvation administered in
small doses. A rich man's child, living at home,
may care little about the quality of his milk;
but to workmen's children, and even to schoolboys
and schoolgirls, it becomes a matter of
vital importance. For, to mention nothing else,
the abstraction of the cream, by diminishing
one source of animal heat, if long continued
with children mainly fed on milk, causes them
to flag, pine away, and die.

The commonest and the easiest adulteration
of milk is the removal of the cream and the
addition of water— the substitution, in fact, of
skimmed milk and water for pure milk as it
issues fresh from the cow. The jocose title
"sky-blue," by which the falsified article is
known, shows that, in England, the imposture
is not regarded with extreme severity. In
France, on the contrary, the adulteration of milk
is punished with wholesome— some may think