a fat unctuous substance, prepared from milk by beating or churning.

It was late ere the Greeks appear to have had any notion of butter; their poets make no mention of it, and are yet frequently speaking of milk and cheese.

The Romans used butter no otherwise than as a medicine, never as a food.

According to Beckman, the invention of butter belongs neither to the Greeks nor the Romans. The former, he thinks, derived their knowledge of butter from the Scythians, the Thracians and Phrygians; and the latter from the people of Germany.

The ancient Christians of Egypt burnt butter in their lamps instead of oil; and in the Roman churches, it was anciently allowed, during Christmas time, to burn butter instead of oil, on account of the great consumption of it otherwise.

Butter is the fat, oily, and inflammable part of the milk. This kind of oil is naturally distributed through all the substance of the milk in very small particles, which are interposed between the caseous and serous parts, amongst which it is suspended by a slight adhesion, but without being dissolved. It is in the same state in which oil is in emulsions: hence the same whiteness of milk and emulsions; and hence, by rest, the oily parts separate from both these liquors to the surface, and form a cream. See Emulsion.

When butter is in the state of cream, its proper oily parts are not yet sufficiently united together to form a homogeneous mass. They are still half separated by the interposition of a pretty large quantity of serous and caseous particles. The butter is completely formed by pressing out these heterogeneous parts by means of continued percussion. It then becomes an uniform soft mass.

Fresh butter which has undergone no change, has scarcely any smell; its taste is mild and agreeable; it melts with a weak heat, and none of its principles are disengaged by the heat of boiling water. These properties prove, that the oily part of butter is of the nature of the fat, fixed, and mild oils obtained from many vegetable substances by expression. See Oils.—The half fluid consistence of butter, as of most other concrete oily matters, is thought to be owing to a considerable quantity of acid united with the oily part; which acid is so well combined, that it is not perceptible while the butter is fresh and has undergone no change; but when it grows old, and undergoes some kind of fermentation, then the acid is disengaged more and more; and this is the cause that butter, like oils of the same kind, becomes rancid by age.

Butter is constantly used in food, from its agreeable taste; but to be wholesome, it must be very fresh and free from rancidity, and also not fried or burnt; otherwise its acid and even caustic acid, being disengaged, disorders digestion, renders it difficult and painful, excites acrid empyreumatic belchings, and introduces much acrimony into the blood. Some persons have stomachs so delicate, that they are even affected with these inconveniences by fresh butter and milk. This observation is also applicable to oil, fat, chocolate, and in general to all oleaginous matters.

For the making of butter, see Agriculture Index.

The trade in butter is very considerable. Some compute 50,000 tons annually consumed in London. It is chiefly made within 40 miles round the city. Fifty thousand firkins are said to be sent yearly from Cambridge and Suffolk alone: each firkin containing 56lbs. Uttoxeter in Staffordshire is a market famous for good butter, infomuch that the London merchants have established a factory there for that article. It is bought by the pot, of a long cylindrical form, weighing 14lb.

**Shower of Butter.** Naturalists speak of showers and dews of a butyraceous substance. In 1695, there fell in Ireland, during the winter and ensuing spring, a thick yellow dew, which had the medicinal properties of butter.

**Butter**, among chemists, a name given to several preparations, on account of their consistence resembling that of butter; as butter of antimony, &c. See Chemistry Index.

**Butter-Bur.** See Tussilago, Botany Index.

**Butter-Milk**, the milk which remains after the butter is produced by churning. Butter-milk is esteemed an excellent food, in the spring especially, and is particularly BUTTERMILK. See Pinguicula, Botany Index.