Jlne 9, 1904] 



NA TURE 



137 



The cuncluding portion of the address is a powerful plea 

 for the adequate endowment of research of all kinds. As 

 Prof. Appell showed, it is in research laboratories that 

 advances in industrial processes are really made, and it is 

 a wise economy to encourage the foundation of such insti- 

 tutions. The discourse should have an immediate beneficial 

 effect on the further supplv of higher scientific education 

 in France, and it is probable that the lessons drawn by 

 f'rof. Appell from Charlottenburg and from similar .American 

 technical institutes will serve to demonstrate to French 

 statesmen the importance of the subject with which the 

 address deals with such ability. 



SOFT CHEESE-MAKING IN THE HOME 

 COUNTIES. 



IN the rapid increase of grass land during the last thirty 

 years, farming in the Home Counties has seen a re- 

 markable change. The exhaustion of land by the too fre- 

 quent growth of cereals during the period of high prices, 

 and the fall in the price of corn since, made corn, as 

 th» main product of farming, unprofitable to cultivate in 

 part of this district. The land has been laid, or in too many 

 cases has been allowed to lay itself, down to grass, and, iii- 

 •stead of corn, milk has now become the principal agri- 

 cultural product. This change is most noticeable within a 

 circle having London for its centre and a radius of thirty or 

 forty miles, for milk is both bulky and perishable, and rail- 

 way' charges and time in transit both desiderate its pro- 

 duction near the great centre of consumption. 



It must not be supposed that the greater part of this area 

 IS particularly well suited for grazing purposes. On the 

 contrary, unlike the west country, or the polders of 

 Holland, where second year's grass has all the appearance 

 ■of an old pasture, it takes twenty years to produce a good 

 pasture on the London-clay or Boulder-clay soils. It was 

 ■one of the most mischievous effects of the high price of 

 corn in the middle of the last century that the good old 

 pastures, which formed perhaps one-third of most of the 

 farms, were broken up. I3esides, even when a good pasture 

 'has been produced, the climate is not humid enough in 

 •summer to produce an abundant growth ; it is rare to get 

 more than one cut of meadow-hay in a season, and the 

 aftermath generally provides indifferent grazing. Per acre, 

 the returns in milk are therefore not great. No doubt the 

 output might be greatly increased by introducing the Danish 

 system of dairy-farming, i.e. growing a succession of green 

 tillage crops for feeding the cows instead of pasturing 

 them, but the scarcity of cheap labour, which is the most 

 serious drawback to intensive farming in the neighbourhood 

 ■of London, prohibits the practice of this system. 



The time of year when the milk production is greatest 

 is the month of May. From observations made in Essex 

 last year it was found that the yield of milk in May was 

 about 20 per cent, greater than in the winter, while during 

 the summer it fell off to an equal extent as the quality of 

 the grazing deteriorated. The consumption of milk in 

 London, on the other hand, fluctuates but little, and farmers 

 must therefore limit their sale to their minimum output, and 

 are unable to take advantage of the flush of milk in the 

 spring to increase their returns. 



It is clear that dairy-farmers require some outlet for this 

 surplus milk. To give it to the calves and pigs is to utilise 

 It for a purpose for which foods purchased at half the price 

 per food unit would serve equally well. Taking everything 

 into consideration, the use to which it could most profitably 

 ■be put is in the making of soft cheese, for which there is a 

 ready demand whenever placed on the London market. Soft 

 cheese-making requires none of the expensive appliances 

 and little of the storage that are necessary for hard cheese- 

 making, and there is nothing to hinder its being carried 

 out on any farm. But it needs knowledge and skill, and 

 this is a subject of agricultural instruction, therefore, which 

 the education committees in the Home Counties could most 

 usefully provide. 



. Very opportunely, a little handbook on soft cheese-making 

 has recently appeared,' for the preparation of which the 



■ "The Practice of Soft Cheese-making." By C. W. Walker-Tisilale, 

 F.I.C., and T. R. Rr>binson. F S.I. Pp. 51. (London: Office of the 

 Dairy It^orid 3.nd Hyitish Dairy Farmey, 1903.) Price is. 



authors, in virtue of their experience at Reading and \\ ye, 

 are particularly qualified. First and foremost they lay stress 

 on the need for cleanliness in the handling of milk, for, as 

 they point out, taints are far more noticeable, because 

 further developed, in soft cheese than in the milk from 

 which it is made. But even in the production of milk for 

 sale, reform in the matter of cleanliness is badly needed. 

 Nowhere probably in the whole of Europe are cows kept in 

 a filthier condition than in parts of England and Wales, 

 and it is not unknown to find in milk a sediment of hair, 

 dust and dung, which points to dirty cattle. In Holland 

 and Hungary the cows are regularly groomed, and this is 

 not only done to prevent contamination of the milk, but 

 also because the cows, being made more comfortable, do 

 better and give more milk. Besides dirtiness of the cows, 

 contamination of milk is due to a variety of causes — dust 

 blowing in an ill-kept, windy byre, neglect of the milkers to 

 wash their hands before milking or to put on a clean over- 

 jacket, the use of impure water for washing pails and 

 churns, &:c., and it must be remembered that not only is 

 such contamination an injury to the public, but it is some- 

 times the cause of loss to the farmers themselves when 

 milk is returned to them as unsaleable. Short courses of 

 instruction in the handling of milk for farmers and farm 

 hands are badly needed. It may be doubted whether, with- 

 out systematic' science training, all the sources of bacterial 

 contamination of milk can ever be guarded against, and it is 

 to be urged that the county education committees should 

 also provide for instruction in dairy bacteriology for those 

 who, though a limited few, will, when distributed through 

 the farming community, gradually spread the knowledge of 

 the possible sources of bacterial contamination. 



Once the principles of cleanliness have been mastered, the 

 making of soft cheese is merely a matter of practice and 

 attention to the details which are admirably set out in this 

 little handbook. Of the sorts of cheese for making which 

 directions are given, Bondon, Coulommier and Cambridge 

 may be specially recommended, because they are milk 

 cheeses and will consume the whole of the surplus milk 

 on a farm, and because they need no ripening, and therefore 

 require no storage accommodation. For the first-named 

 especially there is known to be a good demand in London. 

 They can all be made at any farm where a room capable 

 of being kept at a uniform temperature is available, by the 

 purchase of 5/. worth of appliances. 



This is only one of the directions in which education com- 

 mittees in the Home Counties can directly aid the new style 

 of farming, and in the neglect of whic'h they will lose a 

 splendid opportunity for usefulness. Greater productive- 

 ness of the land" by more rational manuring, more 

 economical feeding of dairy cattle, and improvement in 

 the milk-producing qualities' of dairy herds, are also needed 

 to make the industry fairly profitable. In the writer's ex- 

 perience the majority of farmers feel their difficulties far 

 too acutely to reject any means of improvement which are 

 provided in a form of which they can make practical use. 

 ' T. S. D. 



INHERITANCE OF PSYCHICAL AND 

 PHYSICAL CHARACTERS IN MAN.' 

 TN his Huxley lecture, Prof. Karl Pearson gives the result 

 ■*■ of a prolonged investigation into the inheritance of the 

 mental and moral characters in man (see Nature, vol. Ixviii. 

 p. 607, October 22, 1903). His main conclusion is a re- 

 markable one ; it is that " the physical and psychical 

 characters in man are inherited within broad lines in the 

 same manner, and with the same intensity. . . . We 

 inherit our parents' tempers, our parents' conscientiousness, 

 shyness and ability, even as we inherit their stature, fore- 

 arm and span," 



Great as are the obstacles in the way of a precise deter- 

 mination of the power of heredity in the physical sphere, 

 those in the psychical are far greater. This arises partly 

 from the difficulty of obtaining trustworthy evidence in the 



1 " On the Inheritance of the Mental and Moral Characters in Man, and 

 its Comparison with the Inheriiance of the Physical Characters." The 

 Huxley Lecture for 1Q03. By Prof. Karl Pearson, F.R.S. Pp. 179-237- 

 (Published by the Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland, 

 3 Hanover Square, London, W.) 



NO. 1806, VOL. 70] 



