COMPOSITION OF CHEESE. 



IN the opinion of many persons English cheese is not what it 

 used to be in the good old time, when it was far more common 

 than now-a-days for farmers' wives personally to preside over the 

 dairy and conduct the making of cheese through its various 

 stages. Some people assert positively that the English cheese 

 of the present clay is inferior in quality to that which was made 

 centuries ago. It is of course impossible to give satisfactory 

 proofs of this supposed inferiority ; but at the same time it must 

 be admitted that the prevailing custom of leaving the chief dairy 

 operations almost entirely in the hands of servants furnishes 

 strong presumptive evidence in favour of those who maintain 

 these views. As a rule, we have found the best cheese on farms 

 where the mistress of the house was herself dairymaid-in-chief, 

 especially if industrious habits and scrupulous cleanliness were 

 associated with superior intelligence. Indeed I have had re- 

 cently frequent occasion to notice the intimate connection which 

 appears to exist on the one hand between good cheese and clean- 

 liness, order, general intelligence, and desire to excel, and on 

 the other hand between bad cheese, slovenliness, ignorance, 

 and practical conceit. In the best-managed dairies, however, 

 cheese-making is practised entirely as an empiric art, which is 

 admitted by our best practical authorities to be capable of great 

 improvement, the importance of which is obvious when we con- 

 sider the large amount of capital directly or indirectly embarked 

 in dairy-farming. Mr. Humberstone, member for Chester, has 

 the merit of having first directed the attention of our Society to 

 the importance of scientific investigation into the principles of 

 cheese-making ; and the Council, on the recommendation of the 

 Chemical Committee, made a special grant to enable me to visit 

 the principal dairy districts of England, to carry out certain 

 practical experiments, and obtain what practical assistance I 

 required. The more direct laboratory experiments, which, like 

 the whole investigation, are still in active progress, have been 

 selected by the Chemical Committee as one of the regular 



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