82 BRITISH DAIRYING. 



flavour which makes it pleasant to eat is the product of these 

 micro-organisms. This flavour, indeed, as in butter, is merely 

 incipient decomposition. The flavours of different sorts of 

 cheese, or the differing flavours of one sort of cheese, are owing 

 to the different kinds of microbes and fungi which are at work in 

 cheese as it ripens ; and hence it is that for special sorts of 

 French cheese, for example, ripening-rooms are carefully 

 managed with the view of promoting the multiplication of the 

 desired ferments on the floor and walls, in the air, and so on 

 to thoroughly impregnate the rooms with the particular 

 spores which give to the cheese Camembert, Brie, Roquefort, 

 &c. its special characteristic appearance and flavour. 



Ventilation and Cleanliness. 



Rooms in which milk is kept should, if possible, be cool, 

 dry, clean, and well ventilated without draughts, the air coming 

 into them being free from odours that may taint the milk. 

 Butter dairies especially should be free from everything that is 

 objectionable, be it solid dirt, liquid impurity, or atmospheric 

 abomination ; because a greater surface of milk is exposed in 

 them than in cheese dairies, and exposed for a much longer 

 time. Probably the chief merit of the Jersey Creamer lies in 

 the covers which protect the milk from possible contamination 

 by an impure air, from draughts which might interfere with the 

 rising of the cream, and from strong rays of light, which some- 

 times cause white specks or flakes of coagulated casein, to 

 appear in the butter. It is of primary importance that the 

 floor of a dairy should be thoroughly well laid, without any 

 joints or crevices into which milk that is spilled may run and 

 afterwards ferment, throwing off into the air bacteria which 

 may easily cause fermentation of the milk in the pans. 



Why is it that milk in a dairy turns quickly sour at times ? 

 Were the cause traced to its source, the culprit would probably 

 be found to be putrid milk in some cranny of the floor or walls. 

 Staffordshire tiles, set solid in cement, the joints being per- 

 fectly closed by the same material, can be recommended as 



