210 SECTIONAL ADDRESSES 



camemberti covers the entire surface with a fioccose, white mycelium, 

 which gradually causes the cheese to take on a soft, smooth texture. 



Various strains of Penicillium roqueforti and P. camemberti have been 

 isolated and in modern scientific cheese-making deliberate infection is 

 now practised. For our series of blue-veined cheeses, D. W. Steuart, 

 and N. S. Golding have recommended consistent inoculation by selected 

 strains of the particular fungus owing to the liability of infection by 

 undesirable species in English cheese factories. It is because of these 

 methods that one sees advertisements such as ' un Roquefort d'origine 

 fabriqueavec du lait de brebis et affine dans les celebres caves naturelles de 

 Roquefort.' The French government passed a decree a few years ago 

 that only cheese ripened in this way was entitled to be called Roquefort. 



Every organic substance is liable sooner or later to become infected 

 with some kind of mould. Even in Old Testament times we learn that 

 the Gibeonites, working wilily in order to persuade Joshua that they had 

 come from a far country, took care that all the bread of their provision was 

 dry and mouldy ; and this, though mentioned last in the list of arrange- 

 ments, was the first mentioned 'as proof of their story. In the Lambeth 

 manuscripts (1460-1470) we find ' Thou lettest poore men go bare, thy 

 drynkis soweren, thou mouldedest metis where-with the febull myght 

 wele fare.' Robert Hooke in his Micrographia has an Observation 

 ' Of blue Mould, and of the first Principles of Vegetation arising 

 from Putrefaction.' He writes : ' The Blue and White and several kinds 

 of hairy mouldy spots, which are observable upon divers kinds of 

 putrifyd bodies, whether Animal substances, or Vegetable, such as the 

 skin, raw or dress'd, flesh, bloud, humours, milk, green Cheese, etc. or 

 rotten sappy Wood, or Herbs, Leaves, Barks, Roots, etc. of Plants, are all 

 of them nothing else but several kinds of small and variously figur'd 

 Mushroms, which, from convenient materials in those putrifying bodies, 

 are, by the concurrent heat of the Air, excited to a certain kind of vege- 

 tation, which will not be unworthy our more serious speculation and 

 examination . . .' Malpighi (1686) also turned his attention to the 

 microscopical observation of moulds growing on cheese, Cucurbita, 

 lemons, oranges, wood, and bread. 



As we have seen, man has taken advantage of the natural infection of 

 the juices of fruits, cereals, and so on, and after arranging for such in- 

 fection to take place as he wished, has come to the stage where the infection 

 is controlled and the organism most suited for his particular purpose is 

 used to bring about the desired change. But modern man does not remain 

 satisfied with the methods of his ancestors, or even with those of his 

 immediate predecessors. It is not only that he desires to make two 

 blades of grass grow where one grew before, but he wants them twice as 

 big at half the cost and twice the speed. He had been going to the ant 

 and considering the lilies for many centuries before he realised that moulds 

 and other microscopic fungi were bringing about changes that he was 

 unable to repeat without their aid. 



There is difficulty in apportioning credit for the modern application 

 of moulds to industry. The first step was made by Louis Pasteur in his 

 classical studies on tartaric acid when he used a mould to bring about a 



