CHEESE. 157 
microbes. Taking Camembert as an example, on the outside 
of this is to be seen a greenish colour, consisting of a dead 
fungus, which while it lives gets into the curd, and feeds on 
the acid of the fresh Cheese for its maintenance. Meantime this 
acid is fatal to the particular microbes which give the Camembert 
its distinctive flavour; but directly the acid has been all used. 
up by the fungus from within the Cheese these microbes begin 
to multiply, and spread. The special fungus, or mould is allowed 
to exist on the walls of the Camembert Cheese factories, and its 
little poppyheads burst, keeping the air full of dusty spores 
which penetrate the curd. Then the microbes which are already 
there (since the exhaustion of the curd acid by the fungus) start 
work, and convert the curd into soft digestible Cheese. 
So is it similarly, with all the foreign Cheeses. A French 
doctor has identified the several microbes which produce the 
approved flavours, and which can be supplied in separate bottles. 
With such microbes, and a few plain directions about tempera- 
ture, any Cheese may be made at option. The monks of 
Briquebec, Port du Salut, have been noted for supplying a 
famous Cheese, the secret of which they would not reveal. But 
some scientists secured specimens of its particular microbe, then 
cultivated the same in test-tubes, and were thus enabled to tell 
all the world how the said famous Cheese can be produced. A 
Camembert Cream Cheese is made to-day at Reading, its im- 
ported bacteria being the Micrococcus maldensis, and Bacillus 
fermitatis, and its mould Penicillium candidum. Nowadays, at 
the different dairy factories up and down the country, whither 
the farmers send their milk, the butter-fat is extracted, whilst 
the residual milk, sugar, casein, and other solids remain in their 
hands wherewith to feed the calves; and as these creatures 
require some sort of fat in place of the Cheese-cream, cod-liver 
oil is added, at sixpence a gallon, very successfully. 
Roquefort Cheese is made from the milk of ewes, and goats. 
When dry enough the Cheeses are placed in a deep cavern of 
the limestone rock, at a temperature of 40° Fahrenheit. They 
are salted, and the mould fungus is scraped off from time to time, 
until they turn from a white to a blue, and on through that to a 
reddish brown; this is a rich Cheese, and has to be kept a 
considerable time before it is ripe enough for eating. 
Gruyere Cheese (from Gruyere, a Canton of Switzerland) is 
made by the curd being pressed in large, and comparatively 
