_Preserved Milk._--Various plans have been proposed to render milk more portable, and to preserve it sweet for days and even months. Mr. Borden of Connecticut, United States, prepares a concentrated milk by boiling the fluid down in vacuo, at a temperature under 140° Fahrenheit, mixing the resulting solid with sugar, and rapidly placing the compound in tins, which are then hermetically sealed. It is said that solidified milk prepared by this process remains sweet for many months. In France, solidified and concentrated milk are largely prepared; and it is certain that London and other large towns will yet be supplied with milk rendered portable and more stable, by the removal of a large proportion of its water. In many parts of Ireland pure milk could be bought at from 7d. to 8d. per gallon. I do not despair to see factories established in such places for the manufacture of preserved milk as a substitute for the dear and impure fluid sold under the name of milk in London and other large cities. It is stated that solidified milk prepared in Switzerland is now sold in London. SECTION III. BUTTER. _History of Butter._--The very general use of butter as an article of food is demonstrated by the familiar saying--"We should not quarrel with our bread and butter"; yet this article, now so commonly used throughout the greater part of Europe, was either unknown or but imperfectly known to the ancients. In the English translation of the Holy Scriptures the word butter does certainly frequently occur; but the Hebrew original is _chamea_, which, according to the most eminent Biblical critics, signifies cream, or thick, sour milk. In the 20th chapter of Job the following passage occurs:--"He shall not see the rivers, the floods, the brooks of honey and butter." Now, we can conceive streams of thin cream, but we cannot imagine a river of butter. The oldest mention of butter is found in the works of Herodotus. In the description of the Scythians given by this ancient author, reference is made to their practice of violently shaking the milk of their mares, for the purpose of causing a solid fatty matter to ascend to its surface, which, when removed from the milk, they considered a delicious article of food. Hippocrates, who wrote a little later than Herodotus, describes, but in clearer language, the manufacture of butter by the Scythians; he also alludes to the preparation of cheese by the same people. The word, butter, does not occur in any of Aristotle's writings, and although mention is made of it in the works of Anaxandrides, Plutarch, and Ælian, it is evident that they considered it only in the light of a curious substance, employed partly as an article of food, partly as a medicinal salve, by certain barbarous nations. About the second or third century, butter was but little known to the Greeks and Romans, and there is no reason to believe that it was ever generally used as an article of food by the classic