CREAM RAISED BY GRAVITY PROCESSES. 169 



lack of knowledge. Give the farmer more education and 

 knowledge and better conditions of life, and it will not be 

 long before the quality of the milk and the whole dairy 

 business on the farms will be revolutionized. 



The straining of milk into wooden dishes is also ap- 

 plied in the Holstein method, which is still used in many 

 places abroad. It has been proved beyond a doubt that 

 first-class aromatic products of good keeping quality may 

 be obtained by handling the milk in wooden vessels. 

 These require greater care in cleaning, and are therefore 

 not adapted to creamery use, but they have advantages 

 which tin vessels lack. As is well known, wood is a poor 

 conductor of heat, for which reason wooden dishes are very 

 suitable to the simple conditions present in the dairies of 

 ordinary farms. No special arrangements are necessary to 

 keep the milk in them at something like an even tempera- 

 ture, and comparatively much and good cream is obtained 

 by their use. 



The milk is allowed to sour spontaneously in this 

 method, but up to very late there was no rational and 

 systematically conducted ripening, even in the most modern 

 dairy methods a lack which certainly has not been 

 to the advantage of the products. The modern dairy 

 practices need to be reformed in this respect as well as 

 the old-fashioned method here considered. Even the latter 

 is not incompatible with such a systematic souring, as we 

 shall see later on in this book, where more detailed 

 directions for this souring will be given. 



In this system of cream separation the ripening takes 

 place at the same time as the cream-raising. By closer 

 examination this is found to possess both advantages and 

 disadvantages. 



