July 2, 1920.] 



Agricultural Gazette of N.S.W. 



487 



the surface ? Here again, the care and expense entailed in properly 

 pasteurising cream were incurred only to be partially nullified by reinfecting 

 the butter with the water used for washing it. Water used for such purposes 

 cannot be too closely examined. During the past few months the Dairy 

 Branch has warned several factories on this matter, as a result of bacterio- 

 logical examinations carried out by the Department. The last instance is 

 one where the water for washing the butter is drawn from a well into which 

 water soaks from an old swamp. The company has put down shafts in different 

 directions with the same result, and as good water is seemingly unobtainable 

 in the vicinity of the present site, the removal of the factory to where it can 

 be got is now under consideration. A pure water supply is an absolute 

 essential for dairy produce factories. Those factories that have one should 

 carefully guard it from contamination. In many cases inferior water can be 

 greatly improved by a proper system of filtering, and even where the supply 

 is fairly good it would be all the better for being filtered — the pipes through 

 which it is pumped in the course of time always become, to a certain extent, 

 dirty and this sedimentary matter should be removed. 



Table III. — Showing Numbers and Kinds of Micro-organisms found in 

 1 Gram. (1 c.c.) of the following samples. 



Samples. 



Moulds. 



(CI) Cream before pas- 

 teurising. 



(C2) Cream immediately 

 after pasteurising. 



(CS) Cream immediately 

 prior to churning, 



(C4) Butter in box after 

 packing. 



(C5) Butter-wash water 



1,000 



!,000 

 200 



Sampled — Cream before Pasteurising. — The cream, as received in cans 

 from the various suppliers of the factory, after being weighed and sampled 

 for testing, was graded, and the best quality pumped into a 600-gallon 

 pasteurising holder of the batch type. The acidity of the bulk cream, after 

 this had been well mixed by the rotating coils of the pasteuriser, was 

 determined at 0*48 per cent, lactic acid. A neutralising agent (lime) was 

 added in order to reduce this acidity to the requisite percentage before 

 pasteurisation was carried out. The sample for plating was collected from 

 the bulk cream by means of a sterile pipette in the holding vat, after 

 blending was completed and before the lime had been added. From the 

 plates it was evident 1 c.c. of the cream contained 150,997,000 micro- 

 organisms; of these, 150,000,000 were Bad. lactis acidi, or desirable lactic 

 fermenters, and 200,000 were streptococci. Of the total count, 498,000 

 bacteria (including organisms such as Proteus vulgaris, B. subtilis, Bad. 

 Jluorescens liquefaciens, Bad. fulvum,, and a micrococcus) were able to 

 liquefy gelatin or digest casein of milk ; 248,000 were organisms of the 

 coliform group, or undesirable lactose fermenters, while of the 45,000 



