232 SCIENCE AND PRACTICE OF DAIRYING. 



The stands on which the cheeses are placed in the ripening- room 

 are made of wood. They are adapted to the form of the cheese, and 

 the boards should be made of unpolished wood, and so wide that 

 there is plenty of room to rest the whole surface of the cheese on 

 them. 



Flies of all sorts must be excluded from the ripening-room. 

 Especial care should be exercised in this respect in the rooms in 

 which soft cheeses are ripened. In soft cheeses, the larvae of differ- 

 ent kinds of flies are apt to become embedded, especially during 

 summer, in the months of July, August, and September. This is 

 more especially the case with those of a common cheese-fly (the Pio- 

 phila casei). As cheeses in which the larvae of flies are embedded 

 ripen more quickly than other cheeses, such cheeses should be sold 

 as quickly as possible a practice which is not without risk. The 

 best method of protection against such risk is to take precautions 

 which are not difficult to carry out, to exclude flies altogether from 

 the ripening -room. If, however, it is desired to destroy the larvae 

 which may have lodged in cheese, the best method is to dip the cheese 

 repeatedly in a lukewarm strong liquid extract of common pepper. 



In all hard cheeses which have been carelessly treated in the 

 store-room, the common cheese-mite (Acarus siro) occurs often in 

 enormous numbers, and in time converts the dry cheese mass into 

 a powder made up of the excrements and skins of the mites casting 

 their skin. In fresh dry hard cheeses they dig shallow passages 

 or holes in the rind. Their action is less harmful than that of the 

 cheese-fly, and they may be easily destroyed by rubbing the cheese 

 over several times with oil, or with strong solutions of salt or spirits 

 of wine, and by brushing the cheese-stand with soapy water. 



Poisons, for the destruction of rats and mice, should on no 

 account be used in cheese-cellars. 



Up till the year 1880, the arrangement of the ripening-rooms for cheese 

 manufacture was very unsatisfactory in Austria and throughout Germany, 

 and even in Switzerland, where it would be least expected. It was best in 

 France, in the cheese dairies in which the finest French soft cheeses were 

 prepared Heating was effected only through ovens in many cheese- 

 cellars even iron ovens. Of special ventilating apparatus none were known, 

 and the relative percentage of moisture in the air was increased and main- 

 tained at the desired amount by the primitive method of introducing steam 

 occasionally into the ripening-room. Such an arrangement was that of 

 Pfister-Huber, for example, who introduced into Switzerland, at the begin- 



