140 AGRICULTURE. 



to chymists and physicians, will become excellent.' 7 

 What on this head is suggested by our own expe- 

 rience is, that, if not made better, they are assured- 

 ly best preserved by dark apartments, neither very 

 dry nor very humid, and by shelves or tables fre- 

 quently washed, and not containing in them any res- 

 inous matter. 



Of the residuum or whey left after cheese-ma- 

 king. 



This is not without its uses, and some of them im- 

 portant. The medicinal virtues of whey have been 

 long acknowledged and much celebrated, and ap- 

 pear to be beyond even the reach of time, which 

 has neither abated their force nor diminished their 

 fame ; for, when all other remedies fail, the modern 

 valetudinarian, like the ancient, is dismissed to 

 mountain air and whey diet. The lives of literary 

 men furnish many striking instances of its nourish- 

 ing as well as its medicinal properties. Boerhave 

 persevered in the use of it, to the exclusion of other 

 food, for many months; and Ferguson for many 

 years. Its effect in fattening hogs is universally 

 known. This nutritive property exists in the mu- 

 cus sugar with which it abounds ; the extraction of 

 which has long employed the science and industry 

 of the Swiss cantons.* 



* See Liechtenstein and Rocol on the sugar of milk. The 

 maximum of its quantity l-28th ; the minimum l-60th. Scheele 

 has shown that this saccharine matter differs essentially from 

 the sugar of canes. See Fourcroy's Chymistry, vol. ix. 



