A Victorian butter factory is a delightful sight. The scrupulous cleanliness, the huge tanks of cream, the vast churns at work, and, above all, the great swiftly-revolving disc of wood upon which the butter is worked. Delicious stuff it is, too, a rich, deep, natural yellow colour, and fresh flavour; infinitely superior to the ordinary home-made product, where the cream is often kept too long, in the effort to collect enough to be worth the churning. Already Victorian butter has reached Great Britain, Germany, Japan, Corea, Arabia, Cape Colony, Natal, Portuguese East Africa, German East Africa, Dutch East Indies, Malay States, Philippines, Reunion, Hawaii, Fiji, and Mauritius—and when I think of the butter we used to have, some ten years ago, when I was in the last-named island, I feel that it and many hundred similar places, have something to thank Australia for. I will not venture to name the country that the tinned abomination, which was sold there under the name of butter, came from, but it was like nothing so much as what the old Oxfordshire ploughmen used to call “dodments,” to “sloime with dodments” being, in their vernacular, the equivalent to “greasing a cart-wheel.” Oddly enough, Victorian farmers do not take kindly to breeding pigs. I believe, if I ever became an agriculturalist, that would be the one line I should take up, though, as far as I know, I never heard of a woman pig-farmer. However, the assertion that Gilbert White makes in his “Natural History of Selborne” that the progeny of one sow amounted to 300 has always fascinated me, and it seems strange that, with the large increase of all other industries in Victoria—particularly of dairy and fruit farms—the number of pigs has actually fallen, though the prices they fetch are higher than they ever were before. Here, at least, should be a chance for the Irish emigrant further than that of “sitting on the gate.” A friend of mine once told me that he was driving through a country district with the parish priest, when they passed an old Irishman engaged in this historical occupation. The priest, drawing rein, mentioned some wedding, at which he had lately officiated, expressing his regrets that he had been obliged to leave directly the ceremony was over, and inquired of the old man whether they had a good supper, and plenty of fun after it. “Sure, yer Reverence,” answered Paddy, his face wreathed in smiles—“we did that. And lashins and lavins ther wur. Buther on bacon!” Lashins and lavins! And so there ought to be for the pigs in the dairy districts, judging from the statistics, which assert that the output of separated milk in the State is 1,385,000,000 pounds, leaving sufficient after every calf in Victoria has been fed to produce 40,000,000 pounds of pork. There’s “buther on bacon fur yez!”