Book I. AGRICULTURE IN SWITZERLAND 61 



twelve English quarts a day ; and with forty cows, a cheese of forty-five pounds can be made daily. In 

 the vicinity of Altdorf they make, in the course of a hundred days, from the 2uth of June, two cheeses 

 dailv of twenty-rive pounds each, from the milk of eighteen cows. On the high pastures of Scarla, a cow 

 during the best season, supplies near sixty pounds of skim-milk cheese, and forty pounds of butter. 

 Reckoning twentj pounds of milk, observes our author, equivalent to one of butter, the produce in milk 

 will be eight hundred pounds for ninety days, or less than nine pounds a day. This small supply he 

 ascribes to the great elevation of the pastures, and the bad keep of the cows in the winter. {For. Quart. 

 Rev. and Cont. Misc.) 



346 Great variety of cheese is made in Switzerland. The most celebrated are the Schabzieger and 

 Gruyere; the former made by the mountaineers of the canton of Glarus, and the latter in the valley of 

 Gruyere. The cheese of Switzerland must have been for a long period a great article of commerce ; for, 

 Myconius, of Lucerne, in the beginning of the sixteenth century, in a commentary on a poem of his friend 

 Glarianus, expatiates on the large quantities of butter and cheese which his fellow-citizens sent into 

 Burgundy, Suabia, and Italy : he adds, that twenty cows would bring in, annually, a net sum of 10(1 crowns. 

 In 1563, a law was passed in the Upper Engadine to guard against fraud in the manufacture of cheese 

 meant for sale. Formerly, the depots of rich cheese were principally near Lake Como; it was supposed 

 that the exhalations, at once warm and moist, ripened the cheese, without drying it too much ; at present, 

 however, these depots are not near so numerous. In the Upper Engadine, cheese loses, by drying, a 

 twentieth part of its weight in the first ten weeks ; and skim-milk cheese the half of its weight in two years 

 Of the quantity of cheeses exported from Switzerland we have no information that can be relied upon ; but 

 it is computed that thirty-thousand hundred-weight of Gruyere cheese « », .* ... 



alone, fit for exportation', is annually made ; and that, from the middle Jgi ^§ff^ 



of July to October, three hundred horses, weekly, are employed in trans- j§»3t§lft«fra 



porting Swiss cheese over Mount Grias. [For. Rev. and Cont. Misc. ^jjjji^saj,',' 'i^j'y ft2 



347. The Schabzieger cheese is made by the mountaineers of the Can- IgK 3 - '<i>. JZzf ySS. 



ton of Glarus alone ; and, in its greatest perfection, in the valley of 

 Kloen. It is readily distinguished by its marbled appearance and 

 aromatic flavour, both produced by the bruised leaves of the melilot. 

 The dairy is built near a stream of water; the vessels containing the 

 milk are placed on gravel or stone in the dairy, and the water con- 

 ducted into it in such a manner as to reach their brim. The milk is 

 exposed to this temperature, about six degrees of Reaumur (forty-six 

 degrees of Fahrenheit), for five or six days, and in that time the cream 

 is completely formed. After this it is drained off, the caseous particles are 

 separated, by the addition of some sour milk, and not by rennet. The 

 curd thus obtained is pressed strongly in bags, on which stones are laid ; 

 when sufficiently pressed and dried, it is ground to powder in autumn, 

 salted, and mixed with either the pressed flowers or the bruised seeds of 

 the melilot trefoil (ifelilotus officinalis), (fig. 43.) The practice of mixing 

 the flowers or the seeds of plants with cheese was common among the 

 Romans, who used those of the thyme for that purpose. The entire sepa- 

 ration of the cream or unctuous portion of the milk is indispensable in the 

 manufacture of Schabzieger. The unprepared curd never sells for more 

 than three halfpence a pound ; whereas, prepared as Schabzieger, it sells 

 for sixpence or seven-pence. (For. Rev. and Cont. Misc.) 



348. The Gruyere cheese of Switzerland is so named after a valley, where the best of 

 that kind is made. Its merit depends chiefly on the herbage of the mountain pastures, 

 and partly on the custom of mixing the flowers or bruised seeds of Melilotus officinalis 

 with the curd, before it is pressed. The mountain pastures are rented at so much per 

 cow's feed from the 15th of May to the 18th of October ; and the cows are lured from 

 the peasants, at so much, for the same period. On the precise day both land and cows 

 return to their owners. It is estimated that 15,000 cows are so "grazed, and 30,000 cwt. 

 of cheese made fit for exportation, besides what is reserved for home use. 



349. Ewe-milk cheese of Switzerland. One measure of ewe's milk is added to three measures of cow's 

 milk; little rennet is used, and no acid. The best Swiss cheese of this kind is made by the Bergamese 

 sheep-masters, on Mount Splugen. (For. Rev. and Cont. Misc.) 



350. The establishment at Hofwijl, near Berne, may be considered as in great part 

 belonging to agriculture, and deserves to be noticed in this outline. It was projected by, 

 and is conducted at the sole expense of, M. Fellenberg, a proprietor and agriculturist. 

 His object was to apply a sounder system of education for the great body of the people, 

 in order to stop the progress of misery and crime. Upwards of twelve years ago he 

 undertook to systematise domestic education, and to show, on a large scale, how the 

 cliildren of the poor might be best taught, and their labour at the same time most pro- 

 fitably applied ; in short, how the first twenty years of a poor man's life might be so 

 employed as to provide both for his support and his education. The peasants in his 

 neighbourhood were at first rather shy of trusting their children for a new experiment ; 

 and being thus obliged to take his pupils where he could find them, many of the earliest 

 were the sons of vagrants, and literally picked up on the highways ; this is the case with 

 one or two of the most distinguished pupils. 



351. Their treatment is nearly that of children under the paternal roof. They go out 

 every morning to their work soon after sunrise, having first breakfasted, and received a 

 lesson of about an hour: they return at noon. Dinner takes them half an hour, 

 a lesson of one hour follows ; then to work again till six in the evening. On Sunday 

 the different lessons take six hours instead of two ; and they have butcher's meat on tint 

 day oi ly. They are divided into three classes, according to age and strength ; an entry 

 is made in a book every night of the number of hours each class has worked, specifying 

 the sort of labour done, in order that it may be charged to the proper account, each par- 

 ticular crop having an account opened for it, as well as every new building, the live stock, 

 the mat-hires, the schools themselves, &c. &C. In winter, and whenever there is not out- 



