84 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. 



The fourth cheese was the worst of the four, and had to be sold 

 at 5d per pound. It was full of holes, badly made, and had a very- 

 strong smell. It was evident that the whey was not carefully 

 pressed out in the making. 



The examination of these and other American cheeses leads me 

 to the conclusion, judging from our imports, that good materials 

 are even more thoroughly spoiled on the other side of the Atlantic 

 than in England." 



To appreciate what Dr. V. says of No. 1 it should be borne in 

 mind that Cheddar cheese was at the time selling by wholesale in 

 London at from 72 to 112 shillings per cwt., say from sixteen to 

 twenty-four cents per pound, and of course retailed at a higher 

 figure. It must have been a very good cheese to elicit such com- 

 mendation. The necessity of attending to the conditions which 

 insure fineness of flavor, when making cheese for an English mar- 

 ket, is shown in the following extract from a letter written by a 

 dealer, himself for years a cheese maker of much note, and the 

 writer of one of the best pamphlets on the subject, to a friend in 

 Ayrshire. He says, " I am engaged in selling large quantities of 

 Cheddar cheese, from Scotland, and you will do a benefit to the 

 producers if you urge upon them to attend to the condition of the 

 evening milk in the morning,* and also to attend particularly to 

 the ripening process. Those two matters afiect the flavor, and 

 flavor is almost everything if a high price is aimed at. I sold in 

 London, yesterday, the produce of two dairies, equally rich, yet 

 the one was twenty-two shillings ($5.50) per cwt. higher than the 

 other." 



It is a creditable fact, and one which should encourage to greater 

 efforts, lihat rapid progress in improvement has been making in 

 this country for some years past ; as evidence of which, and also 

 that a portion, at least, of our product bears a high character 

 abroad, and that foreign prejudice against American cheese is 

 rapidly giving way, we quote the " Mark Lane Express," a Lon- 

 don paper devoted to the agricultural interest, which states that 

 from September, 1858, to September, 1859, 2599 tons of cheese 

 were imported from the United States into Great Britain and 

 Ireland ; or nearly six millions of pounds ; and from September, 

 1859, to September, 1860, that the import amounted to 7542 tons, 



* Alluding, probably, to its approach towards acidity. 



