244 SCIENCE AND PRACTICE OF DAIRYING. 



methods of treatment were also known by means of which the 

 cheese could be made to keep longer. Probably it was cheese made 

 from sheep's or goats' milk, no doubt sour-milk cheeses, that were 

 first prepared in the olden times. Martini and Hornigh have selected 

 a number of notices, from which they infer that the knowledge of 

 cheese is a very old one, and that men early came to prize the 

 manufacture of cheese, and devoted great attention to the pre- 

 paration of the different kinds. Aristotle (384-322 B.C.) wrote 

 concerning the use of different kinds of rennet, and in Varro 

 (115-25 B.C.) we find descriptions of the influence of bulling, of age, 

 of food, and other conditions, on the properties of the milk of the 

 different mammals, and the cheese manufactured therefrom. In 

 Pliny (23-97 A.D.) we learn that in his time a long catalogue of 

 different kinds of cheese was drawn up, and Columella, who lived in 

 the first century A.D., already wrote on the influence of temperature 

 on the thickening of milk with rennet, of the necessity in the 

 pressure of cheese of gradually increasing the pressure in the cheese - 

 moulds, of salting with dry salt, and of salting with brine, of smoking 

 cheese, and of the preparation of herb cheeses. From the writings of 

 Roman authors, we further know that in many districts in the 

 middle and south of France, for example, in the present depart- 

 ment of Aveyron, in which Roquefort is situated, cheese was pre- 

 pared and sent to Rome in the first centuries of our era. The 

 oldest reliable records of German cheese-making belong to the time of 

 Charles the Great. At that time, it would appear that the prepara- 

 tion of cheese was regarded as more important, and was carried on 

 in a wider area, than the preparation of butter. The most thorough 

 understanding of the art of cheese-making generally, and of the 

 nature and importance of all the operations which it involves, is 

 to be found in Switzerland, as is proved by the fact that the Em- 

 menthaler cheese, which is the finest of all kinds of cheese, and the 

 preparation of which in perfect condition is more difficult than the 

 preparation of any other kind of cheese, is made there. 



In the following paragraphs the author will attempt to enumerate 

 shortly the different kinds of cheeses. A complete description of 

 the preparation of all of them is naturally not possible in this 

 work. The author will rather describe in fuller detail the process 

 of the manufacture of certain kinds of cheeses, in order to illus- 

 trate the general principles of cheese manufacture. Such cheeses 

 as are universally known and esteemed will be selected, and such 



