IMPROVEMENTS IN CHEESE-MAKING. 191 



arid set in a brick furnace, the fire applied underneath. Mr. 

 Sears, of Madison County, who owns two factories, has taken 

 out his steam-engine and has tested this contrivance. He says 

 they are the most perfect heaters that have yet been invented, 

 and that he would not use an engine if furnished without cost. 

 This new heater only costs $150 for a large factory ; it is sim- 

 ple, substantial, and gives perfect control of temperature. In a 

 test at his factory, of the wood consumed, he finds that three- 

 fourths of a cord of three-foot wood, will manufacture 12,000 

 pounds of cheese. The placing of the sinks below the vats, by 

 which the whole mass of whey and curds may run out of the 

 vats through a shute at one end, is another labor-saving appli- 

 ance. There are machines for cooling the milk in the vats at 

 night, and preventing the cream from rising, operated by clock- 

 work, and by waste water from the vats. The application of 

 wind for raising water to supply factories has been found to 

 work satisfactorily. 



Then there are two processes for extracting butter from whey, 

 which are claimed to make good, marketable butter, adding 

 largely to the receipts of the factory. The curd mill, though 

 long in use in England, is now just beginning to be introduced 

 in America, and with the best results. Its use is not only a 

 saving of labor, but it improves the texture of cheese, rendering 

 it more compact or less porous. In the Cheddar process, the 

 curds are put in the hoops and pressed ten minutes, then taken 

 out, ground in the curd mill, and then salted. This is, I think, 

 an improvement upon our process, and should at once be adopted. 

 By it you get a more uniform distribution of the salt, and know 

 precisely what is being done, because the curd is uniformly 

 drier, and the salt is not carried out in the whey, as in our proc- 

 ess. It is claimed, too, that by salting before pressure, and 

 while the curd is not sufficiently cool, the salt has the effect of 

 forming a shining, tough pellicle about the particles of curd, 

 not only enclosing whey or moisture, but on account of which 

 the union is less perfect, and the cheese in consequence less 

 compact. Again, the Cheddar dairymen, as soon as they can 

 begin to distinguish an acid condition of the whey, immediately 

 commence drawing it from the vat and allow the acid to further 

 develop itself in the curd spread out, or heaped up in the vat or 

 sink. This, I think, is another important improvement, which 



