A vessel in which butter is obtained from milk or cream by agitation. A great variety of churns are in use; a very common one consists of a deep wooden tub, rather conical, resting on its base, and having a wooden cover, through which passes the churn staff, to the bottom of which is fixed a broad kind of foot, having numerous perforations to occasion a more universal agitation of the milk in churning, the staff being worked briskly up and down. From the mode in which the power is applied in this kind of churn, the operation is very laborious; another kind, therefore, called the barrel churn, is now very generally adopted in our dairies, which consists of a kind of rolling barrel with an apparatus within it, calculated to quicken the formation of the butter by promoting the agitation of the milk. 'The annexed engraving represents an elegant little table churn, constructed of glass by Messrs. Pellat and Green, which shows the manner in which butter is formed in a very interesting manner, a represents an axis placed vertically in a glass cylinder, and furnished with four leaves b b, placed at right angles to each other, (as seen in Fig. 2,) and notched on the edges, and also perforated (as shown in Fig. 1).

To the interior of the cylinder are fixed three leaves c c, at equal distances from each other, and also notched on the edges so as to receive the projecting points of the leaves attached to the axis, and nearly fit them, at the same time allowing the movable leaves to pass freely when the axis is turned round. The agitation is produced by a rapid rotation of the axis with its leaves or fans, which is effected by means of the bevilled wheel d and e, put in motion by the handle f.

Fig. 1.