How shall we estimate the debt we owe to the man or woman who first thought of domesticating the useful cow for the sake of her milk? How early in the world's history that domestication took place it is impossible to say, but we know that the Egyptians appreciated the bovine race so highly that they worshipped the bull Apis, and it would not be hard to trace a similar worship through many other ancient nations, to the Hindoos of the present day.

The Egyptians probably made butter and cheese, as we do: certainly the Hebrews did, for the references to butter and cheese in the various books of the Old Testament are numerous. 'Hast thou not poured me out as milk, and curdled me like cheese?' says Job; and in another place he speaks of 'brooks of honey and butter.' Butter was one of the delicacies which Jael set before Sisera, and ten cheeses of milk was the present which Jesse sent by the hand of his son David to the captain of that thousand of Saul's army in which his brethren were serving. It is of course possible that this butter and these cheeses were made of the milk of sheep or goats, but in enumerating the presents sent to David by Barzillai, cheese of kine is especially mentioned, and from the proverb which says,

'Surely the churning of milk bringeth forth butter,' we may conclude that both butter and cheese were known to the ancients in much the same form as we have them now.

The most ancient butter of which we have any real knowledge is that known as bog butter, which is dug up from time to time in Irish peat-bogs. Two or three crocks of this butter may be seen in the Museum of the Royal Irish Academy, Dublin; it looks like a large lump of chalk, but still retains its fatty nature, and burns like oil. From the hairs which are found in it, the colour of the cows from which it was derived has been ascertained, but at what period it was buried, and for what reason, is not known. It may, perhaps, have been hidden in troublous times, or it is just possible it may have been buried as cream, in order that it might be converted into butter, this process having been resorted to with success at the Cape, after an accidental discovery that cream buried in the earth will turn into butter without churning, only the butter thus produced is not so good as that made in the ordinary way by churning. Even at the present day, in some parts of Ireland butter is made in a very primitive fashion, by churning unseparated milk, the temperature being raised by the addition of hot water. This, of course, leaves a very large proportion of buttermilk, which is eagerly sought by the peasantry to serve as sauce to their potatoes, or to make cakes, instead of yeast, for which purposes it is admirably adapted. Butter-making in England, unfortunately, is by no means so much thought of as in the old times, when every farmer's wife and daughter looked upon that and cheese-making as a portion of their education, as well as their own especial daily task, and were not ashamed themselves to convey their produce to market. Things are altered now: the farmer sends milk instead of butter and cheese to market, and London is largely supplied with foreign butter and cheese, not only from Holland, which was formerly the chief source of import, but from Brittany, Sweden, America, and Canada, the imports of cheese from the latter country having increased so enormously of late years that it is almost impossible to obtain English cheese at an ordinary cheese factor's.

Then, too, the methods of butter and cheese-making have been greatly modified by the introduction of machinery. It is now no longer necessary to wait many hours for the cream to rise in order to skim it off - machinery separates the cream at once from the new milk, and at the great agricultural show at Windsor in 1887, a machine was exhibited which was a combination of churn and separator, making cream or butter from new milk as desired, by merely moving a lever, and turning out a pound of butter a minute.

In our childhood, to watch the process of cheese-making was a never-ending source of amusement. Great was the delight of being allowed to stand on a stool beside the big tub, deep enough to drown us, whilst the dairymaid first cut into the vast mass of curds and whey, sometimes good-naturedly giving us a basin of the delicious compound to eat, whilst she strained off the whey, cutting the curd with a large double-bladed knife, piling it up in huge flocculent masses, and dipping out the whey with a brass or tin dish; then, breaking up the curd with her hands, heaping it into vats lined with clean cloths, and putting the embryo cheeses into a press to squeeze away all the remaining whey, taking them out to pare them and turn them daily, till they had acquired solidity. We all remember the great cheese made in this way at Cheddar, in Somersetshire, for presentation to the Queen: it was formed from one meal's milk of all the cows in the parish, all the farmer's daughters assisting as dairymaids; but the huge cheese was not, we believe, quite the success it deserved to be, its enormous size requiring too long a time to ripen properly. Cheddar, however, is even now at the head of British cheese-making, and turns out immense cheeses of excellent quality, still distancing all competitors, although Canadian Cheddar is very good, and is very frequently passed off as the genuine English article.

The prince of English cheeses is the Stilton, made of cream added to new milk, but this also is now frequently imitated, so that you can seldom be sure of getting the real Leicestershire product. A Stilton cheese is, and has always been, a famous Christmas dish, and when rich and fully ripe is not to be surpassed. Formerly, the whole cheese, with a napkin pinned round it, was set on the table, and scooped out until the rind only remained, the ripening process being hastened by a bottle of good port wine being poured into it. But these are degenerate days: people now seldom make their luncheon of bread and cheese, and even the Dorsetshire peasant is no longer content with a great crust of bread and that mouldy cheesen which proverbially required a hatchet to cut it, but which could be purchased at about threepence a pound, and was so appetising that it was commonly said it might be eaten till you were hungry again.