A practical butter dealer of New York gives the following as the best mode of packing butter, or putting it up for a distant market. The greatest care, he says, should be taken to free the butter entirely from milk, by working it and washing it after churning at a temperature so low as to prevent it from losing its granular character and becoming greasy. The character of the product depends in a great measure on the temperature of churning and working, which should be between sixty and seventy degrees Fahr. If free from milk, eight ounces of Ashton salt is sufficient for ten pounds. Western salt should never be used, as it injures the flavor. While packing, the contents of the firkin should be kept from the air by being covered with saturated brine. No undissolved salt should be put in the bottom of the firkin.

Goshen butter is reputed best, though much is put up in imitation of it, and sold at the same price. Great care should be taken to have the firkins neat and clean. They should be of white oak, with hickory hoops, and should hold about eighty pounds. Wood excludes air better than stone, and consequently keeps butter better. Tubs are better than pots.

Western butter comes in coarse, ugly packages; even flour and pork barrels are sometimes used. Much of it must be worked over and re-packed here before it will sell. It generally contains a good deal of milk, and if not re-worked soon becomes rancid. Improper packing, in kegs too large and soiled on the outside, makes at least three cents a pound difference. Whatever the size of the firkin, it must be perfectly tight and quite full of butter, so that when opened the brine, though present, will not be found on the top.

Until the middle of May, dairymen should pack in quarter firkins or tubs, with white oak covers, and send directly to market as fresh butter. From this time until the fall frost there is but little change in color and flavor with the same dairy, and it may be packed in whole firkins, and kept in a cool place. The fall butter should also be packed separately in tubs.

To prepare new butter-boxes for use in the shortest time, dissolve common, or bicarbonate of soda in boiling water, as much as the water will dissolve, and water enough to fill the boxes; about a pound of soda will be required to be put into a thirty-two pound box, and the water should be poured upon it. Let it stand over night, and the box may be safely used next day. This mode is cheap and expeditious, and, if adopted, would often save great losses. Potash has a like effect.

As already seen, in the statements of practical dairymen, the greatest care is required in the salting or seasoning. Over-salted butter is not only less palatable to the taste, but less healthy than fresh, sweet butter. The same degree of care is needed with respect to the box in which it is packed. I have often seen the best and richest-flavored butter spoilt by sending it to the exhibition or to market in new and improper boxes. A new pine-wood box should always be avoided.

Butter that has been thoroughly worked, and perfectly freed from butter-milk, is of a firm and waxy consistence, so as scarcely to dim the polish of the blade of a knife thrust into it, leaving upon it only a slight dew as it is withdrawn. If it is soft in texture, and leaves greasy streaks of butter-milk upon the knife that cuts it, or upon the cut surface after the blade is withdrawn, it shows an imperfect and defective process of manufacture, and is of poor quality, and will be liable to become rancid.

An exceedingly delicate and fine-flavored butter may be made by wrapping the cream in a napkin or clean cloth, and burying it, a foot deep or more, in the earth, from twelve to twenty hours. This experiment I have repeatedly tried with complete success, and have never tasted butter superior to that produced by this method. It requires to be salted to the taste as much as butter made by any other process. A tenacious subsoil loam would seem to be best. After putting the cream into a clean cloth, the whole should be surrounded by a coarse towel. The butter thus produced is white instead of yellow or straw-color.

Butter has been analyzed by Prof. Way, with the following result:

Pure fat, or oil,82.70
Caseine, or curd,2.45
Water, with a little salt,14.85 = 100