CHEESE MAKING. 385 



cloth gauze to keep out flies. The tables are covered 

 with linen cloths, upon which the cheeses are laid to dry, 

 and are turned evening and morning. In three days 

 they are taken to the curing cellars or caves. 



The village of Roquefort is built upon an elevated 

 plain 2,700 feet above the general level, and is underlaid 

 with limestone rock which is honeycombed with caves 

 and fissures. A constant current of cold moist air 

 passes through these caves, and it is in these that the 

 curing cellars are made. No light of day enters them, 

 and by means of cross-walls and apertures the air cur- 

 rents are directed through the corridors where the 

 cheeses are stored. At this point the cheeses amount in 

 weight to eighteen per cent of the milk used. The tem- 

 perature of these caves ranges from forty-five to fifty-five 

 degrees and the moisture is sixty degrees, on a scale of 

 which a hundred degrees is saturation. 



The first apartment in the caves is the weighing-room, 

 where green cheeses are received from the farmers (pa- 

 trons), for the purpose of curing, by the owners of the 

 caves, who purchase them and cure them with their own 

 product. The cheeses are carefully tested and are then 

 placed on the ground, which is covered with straw, and 

 remain twelve hours to cool down to the low temperature 

 of the caves. They are then removed to the salting-room. 

 A handful of salt is spread over one face of the cheese 

 and this is placed on the ground ; another is salted on 

 one face and placed on the first, and a third is treated in 

 the same way and set upon the second one. In twenty- 

 four hours the cheeses are reversed and salted as before 

 on the other faces. Forty-eight hours afterwards the 

 cheeses are well rubbed with a coarse cloth to make the 

 salt penetrate and are replaced in piles of three. They 

 are then left for two days, when they are returned to the 

 weighing-room and are passed through two operations 

 which are called the '^ raclage'^ (trimming). The first 



