404 MASSACHUSETTS AGRICULTURE. 



stands till the curd is separated, which is then drained, warmed, 

 salted, pressed two days, and turned daily till cured. 



No. 3 was made from a dairy of ten cows ; No. 4 from a dairy 

 of eight. A large dairy appears to be an important condition of 

 cheese. Its quality must be affected, also, by the character of 

 the cows and of their keeping. " There seems at first sight, to 

 be no connection between the application of bones to the 

 Cheshire farmer's poor grass land and the unexpected crum- 

 bling of the Cheshire dairy-maid's cheese. Yet the connection 

 is plain enough. The bones bring up richer grass, which gives 

 richer milk ; and this treated in the old way makes a fatter and 

 therefore more crumbly cheese." 



In the manufacture there should be a regard to health as well 

 as taste. Milk is the first and natural food of man. It would 

 appear, therefore, that cheese eaten as food, to be most health- 

 ful, must partake, as nearly as may be, of the ingredients of 

 milk in natural proportion. If cream is added to the milk, it 

 makes a cheese too rich for common use as food, and if taken 

 from it, too poor. Of all indigestible articles of diet, scarcely 

 any can be more so than hard, skim-milk cheese. It is a wonder 

 how that called the Suffolk, (Eng.,) whose milk is skimmed 

 three or four days in succession, can be digested in human 

 stomachs, for it often requires an axe to cut it, and is said to be 

 so hard that '• pigs grunt at it, dogs bark at it, but neither of 

 them dare bite it." 



Mr. Johnson, an English writer on agriculture and chemistry, 

 has given a table, comparing the ingredients of milk, cheese, 

 (new and skim-milk,) beef and eggs, as follows : — 



Milk. New. Skim. Beef. Eggs. 



" "We see from this table that both cheeses are free from sugar. 

 Either of them, therefore, must be eaten with a quantity of veg- 



* The curd of milk, muscle of meat and ■wliite of eggs are nearly identical. 



