The measures for milk in common use in this country are those used for wine and beer. The wine quart is about one fifth less than the beer quart, and is that most commonly used in England. It is to be regretted that no uniform standard has been adopted throughout the country. CHAPTER VIII. BUTTER AND THE BUTTER-DAIRY. “Slow rolls the churn--its load of clogging cream At once foregoes its quality and name. From knotty particles first floating wide, Congealing butter’s dashed from side to side.” Butter, as we have seen, is the oily or fatty constituent of all good milk, mechanically united or held in suspension by the solution of caseine or cheesy matter in water. It is already formed in the udder of the cow, and the operations required after it leaves the udder, to produce it, effect merely the separation, more or less complete, of the butter from the cheese and the whey. This being the case, it is natural to suppose that butter was known at an early date. The wandering tribes, accustomed to take on their journeys a supply of milk in skins, would find it formed by the agitation of travelling, and thus would be suggested the first rude and simple process of churning. But it is not probable that the Jews possessed a knowledge of it; and it is pretty well settled, at the present time, that the passages in our English version of the Old Testament in which it is used are erroneously translated, and that wherever the word butter occurs the word milk, or sour, thick milk, or cream, should be substituted. And so in Isaiah, “Milk and honey shall he eat,” instead of “butter;” and in Job (29: 6), “When I washed my feet in milk,” instead of “butter.” And the expression in Prov. (30: 33), “Surely the churning of milk bringeth forth butter,” would be better translated, according to the best critics, “the pressing of the milker bringeth forth milk,” or the “pressing of milk bringeth forth cheese.” In the oldest Greek writers milk and cheese are spoken of, but there is no evidence that butter was known to them. The Greeks obtained their knowledge of it from the Scythians or the Thracians, and the Romans obtained theirs from the Germans. In the time of Christ it was used chiefly as an ointment in the baths, and as a medicine. In warm latitudes, as in the southern part of Europe, even at the present day, its use is comparatively limited, the delicious oil of the olive supplying its place.