910 The American Naturalist. [November, 
there will be a tremendous development of the’ cheese indus- 
try in this country. 
We know there are four or five hundred species of bacteria 
in the world. They all produce different sorts of decomposi- 
tion, they all produce different odors and different flavors, and 
when our scientific stations have taught our cheese-makers to 
cultivate their bacteria and plant particular kinds of bacteria 
in the milk of which they are going to make cheese perhaps 
we are going to have four or five hundred different kinds of 
cheese. For aught we can see it may be that the various spe- 
cies of bacteria will produce different flavored cheeses, and 
perhaps fifty years from now, perhaps in less time, a man may 
go to the store and order a particular kind of cheese that was 
made bya peculiar kind of bacteria and another one made 
by another kind. We cannot tell what possible development 
there may be of the cheese industry in the future, and whereas, 
now the cheese-maker must depend very largely upon acci- 
dent for the particular kind of flavor he is going-to get in his 
product, then he will be able to tell absolutely what he must 
use in order to be able to produce the flavor that he wants. 
The result will be a great development of the cheese industry, 
if such time ever comes. 
There will be another advantage in this development when 
it comes. We all know that once in a while cheese becomes 
poison. Every one has read in the newspapers accounts of 
people who have been poisoned by eating cheese. Under cer- 
tain conditions cheese is very distinctly poisonous, and has 
produced very many cases of sickness and many cases of death. 
Now our chemists have studied this poisonous ¢heese. They 
have found that it is poisonous because of the production of 
a peculiar chemical substance in it which they have called 
“tyrotoxicon.” They have found, further, that this tyrotoxi- 
con is a poison produced by a certain species of bacteria. 
Once in a while that poisonous kind of bacteria gets into milk. 
‘The cheese manufacturer is entirely innocent; he cannot help 
it, because he has no means of knowing anything about it. 
But occasionally they get in and his cheese is ripened then 
under the agency of these injurious bacteria. The result is 
