On Milk, as an Agricultural Production and an Article of Food

The milk of the cow, ewe, and goat has, from the most remote ages, been used as an article of food; but on account of the superior flavour of that produced by the cow, it has in modern times, in this country at least, been the only kind employed to any extent. The production of cows’ milk has, in fact, now become the sole object of a very extensive and important branch of agriculture, namely, the dairy husbandry. It is a great commercial object in its natural form, as well as that of cream, in large towns, and a still greater commercial object in the form of butter and cheese in all the country districts; and in all its forms it constitutes a large article of ordinary diet to multitudes of the rural population. In order that I may the more effectually show its intrinsic value as an article of food, and point out the economy which would attend its more extensive use and abundant production, I will first describe its general chemical and physical characters.On examining a portion of milk with a powerful microscope, we perceive that it consists of a transparent fluid, in which numbers of minute globules, of about the 4/10,000 part of an inch in diameter, are seen to float. It is principally to these globules that the whiteness and opacity of the milk is owing. On leaving the fluid at rest for a length of time, the globules separate in a great measure from ...