92 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. 



for the trouble just mentioned is to have the ventilation of the 

 milk room under so perfect control that the outer air at such 

 times may be wholly excluded. 



It was my intention at one time, to describe, in detail, the dif- 

 ferent methods employed in making the various cheeses in highest 

 repute, both in this country and in Europe, and descriptions of 

 matiy of them were prepared in readiness for this report ; but upon 

 further reflection, this course seemed more likely to confuse and 

 distract, than to accomplish any good purpose. Instead of these, 

 the attempt will be made to state the important points in the pro- 

 cess, and to explain, as far as possible, the principles involved in 

 them ; so that the reader may be enabled to deduce the best prac- 

 tice from an understanding of what is required in the nature of the 

 case, rather than follow the empirical or hereditary methods adopt- 

 ed by others. 



Until within a few years the manufacture of cheese has been 

 almost entirely an empirical process, — the mere following of forms 

 which have been handed down from other generations, without an 

 understanding of, or any reference to those guiding principles 

 which should direct the process. Science has at length stepped 

 in, and in several particulars has rendered valuable aid. By it 

 have been accomplished reduction of labor ; increase in quantity of 

 product ; improvement in its quality, and a shortening of the time 



If the condition of allotropism were alone confined to compound bodies — that is to 

 say, bodies made up of two or more elements — we might easily frame a plausible 

 hypothesis to account for it ; we might assume that some variation had taken place 

 in the arrangement of their particles. But when a simple body such as oxygen is 

 concerned, this kind of hypothesis is no longer open to us, — we have only one kind 

 of particle to deal with, and the theory of altered position is no longer applicable. 

 In short, it does not seem possible to imagine a rational hypothesis to explain the 

 condition of allotropism as regards simple bodies. We can only accept it as a fact 

 not to be doubted, and add the discovery to the long list of truths which start up in 

 the field of every science in opposition to our most cherished theories and long re- 

 ceived convictions." In another place the same writer remarks: "The philoso- 

 pher, once led into this train of speculation, ends involuntarily by asking himself 

 the questions — in what does chemical identity consist ? in what will these wonderful 

 developments of allotropism end ? Whether the so-called chemical elements 

 may not be, after all, mere allotropic conditions of fewer universal essences? 

 Whether, to renew the speculations of the alchemists, the metals may be only so 

 many mutations of each other, by the power of science mutually convertible ? There 

 •was a time when this fundamental doctrine of the alchemists was opposed to known 

 analogies ; it is now no longer opposed to them, but only some stages beyond their 

 present development." 



